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TAME ANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN 



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TAME 

ANIMALS 

I HAVE 

KNOWN 

With Apologies to Such Wild Animals as May 
Feel Aggrieved by Comparison 



Being the Personal Histories of 



ALGERNON, An Ass 
MARY, A Dove 
REUBEN, A Lamb 
BESSIE, A Bird 
EZRA, A Shark 
ARAMINTA, A Spring Chicken 



HIRAM, A Hog 
MARIA, A Cat 
SIMON, An Ornithorhyncus 
HESTER, A Militantrum 
HEZEKIAH, A Lobster 
ELIZA, A Goose 



BY 



WILLIAM J. LAMPTON 




NEW YORK 

THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1912 



AH ^^ 



Copyright, 1912, by 
The Neale Publishing Company 



CLA330073 



THIS 

NATURAL HISTORY BOOK 

IS 

THOUGHTFULLY AND TENDERLY 

DEDICATED 

TO 

SUCH NATURE FAKERS 

AS 

STILL 

SURVIVE 



A TIP TO THE READER 

These stories are true enough. Although I 
have left the strict line of historical truth in sev- 
eral dozen places, the animals herein set forth 
are all living characters, — or were, at last ac- 
counts. They lived the lives I have depicted, 
and they show, or showed, the stamp of heredity 
and personality more strikingly by far than it 
has been in the power of my typewriter to tell. 

I believe, as also do Mr. Thompson-Seton and 
others, that natural history has lost much by the 
vague general treatment that is so common. 
What satisfaction would be derived from a ten- 
page sketch of the habits and the customs of Ani- 
mals in general*? How much more gossipy and 
profitable it would be to devote that space to 
some particular individual. This is the principle 
I have endeavored to apply to my Animals. The 
real personality of the individual and his view 
of life are my theme, rather than the ways of the 
race in general, as viewed by a casual and hostile 
human eye. 

The fact that these stories are true enough is 
the reason why they are not tragic. The life of 
a tame animal rarely has a tragic end, unless he 

7 



A TIE- 
TO THE READER 

is edible, however solicitous at times we may be 
to make it so with a club or some other deadly 
weapon. Such a collection of histories naturally 
suggests a common thought, — a moral, it would 
have been called by Mr. iEsop, in his Fable Book. 
No doubt, each different mind will find a moral 
to its taste or notion in these tales of Tame Ani- 
mals I have known, but I hope some will find 
among them a moral as old as Scripture, — we and 
these animals are kin, though we do not care to 
claim it. We have nothing that these animals 
have not at least a vestige of; these animals have 
nothing that we do not in some degree share. It 
all being in the family, I have a right to say what 
I please, and as I please; and if you see anything 
coming your way, swift, — dodge, gentle reader, 
dodge. 

The Author. 
New York City. 



8 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A Tip to the Reader ......... 7 

Algernon, An Ass . 11 

Mary, A Dove 29 

Reuben, A Lamb 45 

Bessie, A Bird • • 59 

Ezra, A Shark ,., . 68 

Araminta, a Spring Chicken 78 

Hiram, A Hog 93 

Maria, A Cat 107 

Simon, The Ornithorhyncus 116 

Hester, The Militantrum ...... 121 

Hezekiah, a Lobster 132 

Eliza, A Goose ... ... ... ...... 142 



ALGERNON, AN ASS 

ALGERNON was an ass. Not such as, 
swept along by the full tide of power, the 
conqueror leads to crimson glory and undying 
fame, — for that kind is scarce enough, goodness 
knows, — but a plain, ordinary, egregious ass. 
Endowed by chance with two parents of undis- 
puted respectability, good sense, — allowing a 
slight margin for the mother, who would insist 
that Algernon was her "darling boy," — and of 
comfortable fortune, the world might have ex- 
pected more of Algernon; but if it had done so, 
it would have been in the same fix Byron said 
England was in, if she expected every man to do 
his duty. 

Nurtured in the lap of luxury, as we say in 
books sometimes and in the newspapers always 
when the blue pencil man isn't looking, Algernon 
developed the idea that he was the only good egg 
in the basket. A thousand reasons a day rose 
in his path and fairly howled at him that he was 
off his trolley and that ere another moon had 
fulled he would be brought up with a jerk. But 
moons waxed and waned, and Algernon did not 
hear the voice of Reason; or if he did, he turned 
a deaf ear to it, — and a donkey has such big 

11 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

ears that when one becomes deaf it is indeed a 
great deafness, — and continued pursuing the even 
tenor of his asinine way. A donkey has been 
known to climb a mountain a mile high, carrying 
a man weighing three hundred pounds avoirdu- 
pois, net, when if he had tripped ever so little in 
a dangerous place the man couldn't have been 
hired to stay on his back. This well-known trait 
in a donkey's character has been the cause of un- 
numbered burdens which he has been called upon 
to bear. How otherwise it would be, if the 
donkey would only listen to Reason. 

At sixteen Algernon, having given unmistak- 
able evidence on numerous occasions that he knew 
at least a dozen or fifteen times more than his 
father ever knew or was likely to, was sent away 
to a Select School for Lads, where he might be 
taught even more, but in a somewhat different 
course. Here the boys soon got a line on him, 
and they loaded him full of a knowledge that 
was very new and strange to him, and very dis- 
agreeable to take. While a boy, as an individ- 
ual, may be an ass, boys, in the aggregate, are 
wholly of a different type, and Algernon was up 
against it hard. 

The donkey is not a fearsome animal. He 
has been known to stand fast though a lion were 

12 



ALGERNON— 

AN ASS 

in his track. It may be said in this connection, 
however, that some donkeys rush in where angels 
fear to tread. 

Algernon was no coward, and he had accumu- 
lated a personal opinion that he was a fighter, so 
when the boys, in the course of their inductive 
system of educating the youthful mind, swooped 
down on him, he put up his dukes — this is 
real prize-ring language — and offered strenuous 
battle. When the services had been brought to 
a close he looked like a dollar bill with seventy 
cents paid out of it, and felt worse than N. Bona- 
parte after the renowned battle of Waterloo. 

The donkey is not quick to learn. Morally 
and logically one would suppose that Algernon 
would have tumbled to himself after this pain- 
ful experience. But no; stinging with the hu- 
miliation of defeat by numbers, he challenged 
any one of his late lickers, so to speak, to a finish 
with bare knuckles. The donkey is not discrim- 
inating. He is quite as likely to attempt to kick 
down a stone wall as he is to kick the palings off 
of an unsubstantial fence. Instead of selecting 
his man, that is to say, picking out one he could 
have walloped the wadding out of with his hands 
tied behind him, Algernon sent a sweeping chal- 
lenge to any man in the "mob of ruffians who had 

13 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

so dastardly assailed" him, — those were the 
actual words of his note of defiance. The "das- 
tardly rufBans," knowing Algernon's prowess, 
accepted his challenge promptly, and forthwith 
selected a hard-hitting town-boy, whose father 
was a professional slugger and whose mother was 
a catamount. This weird proposition was ac- 
cepted by Algernon as a regularly matriculated 
student, and the anti-Algernonites were busy saw- 
ing wood. 

The donkey is a blind beast and has been 
known to walk onto a railroad track when the 
lightning express was coming down grade, with 
the throttle wide open and the sand-valve closed. 

As previously intimated, Algernon did not call 
for the credentials of his opponent. He was so 
determined and solicitous to mop up the earth 
with him that he did not pause in his mad career 
to ask conundrums. It was to be to a finish was 
all he asked and that was what he received. He 
was finished in the first round, and would have 
been buried the next day at five o'clock, standard 
time, had it not been that the physicians, who as- 
sembled the parts they picked up after the scrap, 
were football doctors and knew their business. 
When his respected father heard of what had 
happened to Algernon he laughed a reverberating 

H 



A L G E R N O N— 

AN ASS 

horse-laugh, and said he was glad his son was 
learning the useful lessons of life, and hoped the 
doctor's bills wouldn't be unreasonable. 

The old man hadn't any of the donkey streak 
in his make-up, sure. Evidently Algernon was 
an instance of atavism on the other side of the 
house. 

After this rasping episode in Algernon's prepar- 
atory career he was, in some respects, a changed 
being, but desperate diseases require desperate 
remedies, and there were yet other microbes pur- 
suing their devious way through his system. 
When Algernon left the Select School for Lads 
for the higher college life he was a pretty fair 
specimen of Freshman material, and compared 
favorably with his class. His ears showed oc- 
casionally during his college course, but his were 
not the only ears in that institution; we all know 
a college is not always a collection of the choicest 
samples of mankind, and he was not called down 
more than a thousand times, half of which oc- 
curred in his Freshman form, as might naturally 
be expected. At last, after four years of toil and 
labor, so called, the great day came and he was 
graduated. Then his father looked him over and 
said perhaps he'd do, but he'd like to try him 
awhile first, 

15 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

The donkey sometimes surprises his very best 
friends. 

When Algernon had his degree of B. A. firmly 
attached to him and was put forth to tackle the 
cold, unfeeling world as a real man, he started 
in for it pretty much as he had started at the 
Select School for Lads, although one would have 
supposed that he had picked up a few wedges 
of wisdom on the way. He had an idea that the 
world was his watermelon and wasn't much of a 
proposition anyway, so he went at it about as a 
kitten would go at a frisky fox-terrier, and with 
similar results. To be a successful business man 
was Algernon's towering ambition, and with a 
snug bit of capital supplied by his Papa, he got 
in on the ground floor with a man of experience, 
but no capital. It is hardly necessary to state 
here what the condition of the firm's affairs was 
at the end of the year. Suffice it to say that 
Algernon had the experience. His father just 
laughed and charged the cost of it to his "Tuition 
Account." 

In the meantime Algernon had acquired a 
taste for a beautiful actress lady and told his 
father he wished to make her his wife. This 
manifestation of prudence, — most Algernons 
telling their fathers after the marriage, — gave his 

16 



ALGERNON— 

AN ASS 

father great hopes of his boy, and he felt that 
he could dissuade the young colt from so hazard- 
ous a venture. But no; Algernon was deter- 
mined to marry. 

If there be one thing more than another that 
a donkey is it is being stubborn. 

"Algie," said his father, with unmistakable 
sincerity, when all argument had failed, "you are 
an ass; a plumb, egregious ass." 

"But, Papa, I love her," he pleaded. "She is 
so good, so beautiful, so true, so noble, so per- 
fect a type of rare, unselfish womanhood. She is 
the one woman in the world for me and loves me 
as she has never loved, and for myself alone. I 
know she does. Papa, for she has told me so a 
million times." 

"Um-er," responded his father, rubbing his 
chin deliberately, but with considerable inten- 
sity, "permit me, my dear boy, to develop a 
theory of mine, and we will converse further on 
this topic. It may require a week or so, but 
I'll let you know when I'm ready. I shall have 
to go to Kalamazoo on a business trip, but that 
will not interfere with our arrangements. Now 
run along, Algie, and don't bother Papa till he 
calls you." 

Then the old gentleman put on his war-paint, 

17 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

lined his inside pocket with paper marked V, X, 
XX, L, and C, and took the first train to the 
brainy and intellectual city of Boston, where 
Algernon's Choice was doing a turn in fashion- 
able vaudeville, at thirty-seven fifty a week. He 
reached there in time to see the lady in her act 
that evening and also to shy her a small bunch 
of violets from the box where he sat, with the 
electric light showing off his iron-gray hair and 
silvery mustache to killing advantage. After 
the performance he took her to a supper which 
knocked the spots out of one piece of paper 
marked XX. The next day he sent her a nose- 
gay that paralyzed another piece of paper marked 
X. At the end of four days she was onto her 
millionaire admirer for keeps, and the way she 
accepted his proposition to shake her job and 
elope with him would have made a lighter head 
than his swim. He had a nice little note from 
her, saying how much she appreciated the honor 
of becoming his wife and how she loved him as 
she had never loved, and so on. He had several 
other notes besides which were not so cold that 
they had to be thawed out before they were 
legible. 

Then he suddenly disappeared as mysteriously 
as he had come, leaving not the slightest clue to 

18 



A L G E R N O N— 

AN ASS 

his identity nor any other particulars. He also 
left the lady to mourn the loss of an easy mark, 
but not entirely a loser, for he had been a good 
thing while he lasted, and the lady knew as well 
as everybody else knows that nothing lasts for- 
ever in this world, and that the time to make 
hay is while the sun shines and that a half loaf 
is better than no bread, and — and — well, 
when the lady was convinced that the million- 
aire was a sure miss she wrote a dear little note 
to Algernon not to worry if he had not heard 
promptly from her, because she had been quite 
ill for three or four days and did not want to 
annoy him with her troubles, but she was well 
again now. Algernon ran over to Boston that 
very afternoon to assure himself that the woman 
he loved was safe and well, and when he came 
back he saw his father. That worthy man spoke 
gently of the lady Algernon loved so passion- 
ately, and Algernon pressed both hands over his 
throbbing bosom and showed his venerable sire 
her last little perfumed note, in which she 
breathed out her loyal soul to him. 

"Rats," irreverently exclaimed the old gent, 
"look at these I have, if you want to see the real 
thing in soul breathing." 

Algernon felt his Adam's apple struggling to 
19 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

climb up out of his windpipe, great beads of 
perspiration tumbled over one another on his 
brow, a cold chill hustled up and down his spinal 
column, his knees knocked together, he could feel 
his heart dropping straight down through him 
like a heavy biscuit, and there were other emo- 
tions too numerous to mention; but he took the 
letters and read them, one by one, slowly, so he 
would be sure not to be hasty in his judgment. 
They were methodically arranged, as his father 
did everything, and carefully marked, "Exhibit 
A," "Exhibit B," and so on down to "S" or "T." 

"I was only acquainted with the lady three 
days," the old rooster explained, as he directed 
his son's attention to the endorsements, "and I 
guess I would have needed another alphabet if 
it had gone over another day. It was a cold 
quarter of an hour, as the French say, when I 
wasn't getting a note from her." 

The donkey has been known to stop on the 
very edge of a precipice and refuse to budge an 
inch, despite the fact of vigorous urging from be- 
hind. 

Algernon tore the letters of his lady-love into 
ten thousand or more tatters, before his father's 
very eyes, but his own were opened, and as the 
author of his being gave him the cruel "Ha, ha,'* 

20 



ALGERNON— 

AN ASS 



he sobbingly stuffed the remnants of his broken 
heart back into his cheerless bosom and went 
forth again to meet the world, a sadder and, let 
us be assured, a wiser individual. And when the 
actress lady once more coyly essayed to pull 
Algernon's leg, behold, he had drawn it back and 
had stowed it away in a safe place. 

Algernon's father made another charge to his 
son's "Tuition Account," and waited to see what 
next would happen to the staff of his declining 
years. 

He did not have long to wait. They say the 
hair of the dog is good for the bite, and Algernon 
was to prove this, in part. In his father's office 
was an extremely pretty typewriter, a most ex- 
emplary and excellent young woman, the daugh- 
ter of a friend of Algernon's father, who had 
died penniless, leaving an invalid widow and this 
one daughter dependent upon themselves for sup- 
port. Algernon's father came to the rescue and 
gave the daughter employment at remunerative 
wages, — something more than wages, it was a 
real salary. Algernon was in his father's office 
now, giving an imitation of an only son perform- 
ing arduous labor at his desk; and, to lighten the 
dreariness of his task, he concluded he would 
marry the pretty typewriter and thus secure for- 

21 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

getfulness of all his previous woes. Algernon's 
father was pleased to death with this plan, be- 
cause he knew that kind of a girl would be the 
salvation of a party like Algernon, and he sin- 
cerely hoped that she would be foolish enough to 
undertake to make a man of Algie; but he said 
nothing to bring it about. He knew she was a 
good, sensible girl, and he knew Algernon. He 
was also aware that women do some exceeding 
strange things in the matter of loving and marry- 
ing, and he had hopes. He was willing to let 
the girl run the risk of making a man of Alger- 
non, who was not altogether hopeless, but he 
didn't want it to be on his conscience that he had 
lent a hand, in case the girl failed, so he held his 
peace and prayed for it to come around right. 

Algernon, having made up his mind to marry 
the typewriter, was going to marry her whether 
or no, because, as he considered the proposition, 
a woman in her position would simply make a 
bargain-counter rush to become the wife of a man 
in his. And why not? Wasn't he the only son 
of a rich father, and wasn't the girl so poor that 
she had to work for her daily bread and butter*? 
Really, it was preposterous to think that she 
would do otherwise than make a running jump 
for the golden opportunity he presented. So 

22 



ALGERNON— 

AN ASS 

Algernon dallied awhile with Fate, in an in- 
different and elegant manner, then with superb 
confidence he dropped the glittering bauble of 
himself right down before her eyes and so close 
that all she had to do was to reach out and take 
it in. To his speechless amazement, she de- 
clined to baub, but she thought enough of it to 
thank him for his kindness. 

"Tut, tut," said Algernon, recovering his 
speech and his conceit simultaneously, and as- 
suming an air of large and impending con- 
descension, "tut, tut, my dear girl, you women 
are too impulsive. Think the matter over and 
I'll see you later. Ta, ta," 

True to his word he saw her later and at the 
same time he saw his finish, and it was not served 
on a silver salver, either, the young woman being 
a person who meant business. Notwithstanding, 
Algernon persisted in his attentions until the girl 
mentioned the subject to his father. What the 
Governor said to Algie was not fit for publication, 
but what he said to the girl was : 

"I am very sorry, for Algernon's sake, that you 
will not marry him ; and very glad for your own. 
Chief among the few things that my son has done 
to make me feel some pride in him, my dear, is 
this offer of his to make you his wife. That you 

23 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

have declined it makes me that much sorrier to 
lose you as a daughter." 

The curious reader who is interested in hered- 
ity may pause for a few moments at this point 
in the narrative of Algernon's life and contem- 
plate the manner of man his father was. 

Algernon's next venture was into politics. It 
was an Era-of-Reform year, and the manipula- 
tors of the local campaign were shy on the need- 
ful and there was no available man in sight. Or 
rather, there were plenty in sight, but they were 
not within reach. They had seen Reform Move- 
ments before and they had attempted to do a 
Great Moral stunt in previous campaigns. 
Therefore, when they were now called upon to 
offer themselves on their country's altar for the 
perpetuation of its institutions and the defense 
of the palladium of their liberties, they firmly 
but respectfully refused to go into the sacrificing 
business on a falling market, and the Reformers 
were up a stump for something to head the pro- 
cession. An extraordinary meeting of the Ex- 
ecutive Committee was called, and after due 
deliberation it was decided that Algernon was just 
what they needed in their business, provided he 
would put up accordingly, which it was natural 
to suppose he would, seeing the great honor it 

24 



A L G E R N O N— 

AN ASS 

was proposed to confer upon him by selecting him 
as the leader in a movement having for its ob- 
ject the regeneration of politics and the rehabili- 
tation of honesty in the administration of mu- 
nicipal affairs. 

All this and a good deal more was duly laid be- 
fore Algernon, with the diplomatic discretion 
characterizing all proceedings of similar political 
nature, and as might have been expected, with 
the result that he suddenly realized the fact that, 
quite unsuspected by himself, he was, in reality, 
a great American statesman recognized without 
solicitation by his discerning fellow-citizens. The 
logical sequence of this remarkable discovery was 
an announcement by Algernon of his candidacy 
on the Reform ticket for Member of the Legis- 
lature from the aforesaid ward. He was quite 
sure, after a careful and thorough investigation 
of existing conditions, that the failure of previous 
Reform movements was due to old-fogy notions 
and to too much moss on the backs of the people, 
and he at once proposed a vigorous campaign, 
himself to furnish the vigor. 

At this the practical politicians in charge of 
the campaign applauded the noble and simple 
patriotism of their young and honored leader. 
He proceeded to carry out his ideas in his usual 

25 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

discreet and careful manner, and every man in 
the district who said he could control even as 
many as one vote was not neglected by Algernon. 
A casual computation of these campaign work- 
ers, after the battle was over, showed that they 
controlled twice as many votes as were in all the 
political parties in Algernon's district. Besides 
these there were moral fireworks, sacred brass 
bands, purity processions, and Algernon's litho- 
graph likeness in every saloon window that would 
have one. It was a tropic season in the ancient 
municipality every night and an era of pros- 
perity prevailed for several weeks before the 
election, — after which the vote was counted and 
Algernon learned what it meant to be snowed 
under. He had seen the term used in the public 
prints, but he never fully comprehended its mean- 
ing till now. The Committee later melted the 
snow somewhat by passing a unanimous resolu- 
tion of thanks, in recognition of the magnificent 
battle he had fought for principle at the head of 
a forlorn hope. This forlorn hope feature of the 
campaign Algernon might have learned about 
earlier if he hadn't been Algernon. 

Again Algernon's father furnished the funds 
to square his patriotic son's noble endeavors in 
the cause of right and reform, but this time he 

26 



A L G E R N O N— 

AN ASS 

lost his temper, and saying something about the 

*'d reform, anyhow," he positively refused to 

be further responsible for Algernon beyond an 
allowance which enabled him to appear daily as 
a gentleman of elegant leisure. Algernon had an 
ambition a degree or two above this very agree- 
able social grade, but he knew a good thing well 
enough to know that you can't eat your cake and 
have it, so he accepted the allowance from his 
father with resignation and kept an eye to wind- 
ward. 

It is characteristic of the donkey that although 
he may be turned in on pasture where the grass 
and water are plenty and good, and the shade 
grateful, he will break out if he has a chance and 
try to sample the possibilities of a neighboring 
pasture. 

Algernon grew restless in time, but his father 
resolutely refused to come down with further con- 
tributions, and he was hamstrung, so to speak, 
and remained in the paternal fold. 

Considering what women have done in the im- 
portant duty of choosing husbands, it is not sur- 
prising that Algernon at twenty-nine should have 
been gobbled up by a widow of forty. She was 
a woman of motherly spirit, large means, and 
susceptible nature; and Algernon's father never 

27 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

said a word. He knew Algernon. He might have 
felt sorry for the widow, but a parent's natural 
love for his offspring prompted him to rejoice in 
the hope that, as a husband with the responsi- 
bility of a family, Algernon might be different. 
And he was different, because the widow 
thought he was the finest that ever happened, and 
as she backed her opinion with her money, her 
social prestige, and her wifely encouragement, he 
was a dozen times more of an ass than ever. 



28 



MARY, A DOVE 

THE Talmud, which is a volume of very 
ancient wisdom just as good now as when 
it was first opened, contains a passage to this 
effect: "There is not a single bird more perse- 
cuted than the dove, yet God has chosen her to 
be offered up on the altar. The bull is hunted 
by the lion, the sheep by the wolf, and the goat 
by the tiger. And God said, 'Bring me a sacri- 
fice, not from those that persecute, but from them 
that are persecuted.' " 

Those persons who were living in the vicinity 
of Anywhere some thirty-odd years ago will, I 
am sure, remember Mary, the subject of this brief 
sketch. She was a dear little thing, about ten 
years old, blue-eyed, soft-voiced, timid, and 
sweet; but not at all pretty. She had two 
younger sisters, who were pretty, and two older 
brothers, roystering, good-natured, thoughtless 
boys, who knew Mary was easy, and they im- 
posed on her accordingly, just as all brothers do 
who are similarly situated. It was "Sister, do 
this," and "Sister, do that," a dozen times a day, 
when they could as easily have done it them- 
selves; and as Mary fairly worshiped the ground 

29 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

they trod on, she almost ran her small limbs off 
waiting on them. Mary was just as fond of her 
pretty little sisters and when she was not busy 
trotting around for her brothers she was looking 
after the sisters, so that she really had no time to 
devote to herself. But Mary did not seem to 
mind this so long as she was acceptable to the 
brothers and the sisters, which she was, most of 
the time. True, she could not please four per- 
sons always, not counting her father and mother 
and her teachers, and she was scolded at times; 
but she bore reproof uncomplainingly, and re- 
doubled her efforts to please. 

Mary's mother, a handsome woman, with fash- 
ionable taste, and social aspirations of a lofty or- 
der, was sorely disappointed because her eldest 
daughter did not give promise of some day be- 
coming a raving beauty, who would dazzle so- 
ciety. Notwithstanding Mary's entire lack of 
responsibility for this unfortunate absence of per- 
sonal pulchritude, her mother treated her worse 
than old rags, and tried to make people believe 
it was Mary's fault, when anybody who knew 
anything at all about natural history would have 
known better. Mary's mother isn't the only 
mother who seems to be inclined to hold her 
homely children personally responsible for their 

30 



MARY— 

A DOVE 

homeliness and is always on the keveev to get 
even with them for not possessing the fatal gift. 

The only member of the family who sym- 
pathized with Mary, and gave to her the love 
and the consideration which were her due, was 
her father, from whom she had inherited her 
amiable qualities, and who, to put it mildly, was 
the head of the family de jure^ not de facto. As 
it was the daughter's misfortune that she was not 
born beautiful, perhaps it was her father's fault 
that he permitted his wife to lead him around by 
the nose. Misery loves company, they say, and 
Mary and her Papa were a good deal of com- 
pany to each other, when they could snatch a few 
moments to themselves. 

Even in school Mary was not free, because she 
took her disposition with her wherever she went; 
and it wasn't a great while till the scholars were 
cognizant of their gentle little schoolmate's ca- 
pacity to assist others, and were working her for 
all they were worth. Mary learned about two- 
thirds of the lessons that were to be learned in 
that school, but the teacher gave her credit only 
for her own, and Mary accepted the marks with 
the same meek submission she did everything else. 

Verily the Talmud was right about the dove's 
being a sacrifice, going and coming. 

31 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

As the years went by it was not surprising that 
Mary should accept her share of them as other 
people did. Indeed, it is a wonder, with her dis- 
position, she hadn't been given fifty years while 
others were only getting twenty-five, but Time 
treated her kindly and made her only the just 
allowance. At twenty-five she was the same 
gentle creature of the other days and there was 
no likelihood of a change. Her mother had be- 
come an invalid, and ill health had not improved 
her temper. The two brothers had married and 
gone out into the great world for themselves and 
their families, and they wrote letters home in- 
quiring about "dear mother," but they did not 
bother themselves about her between times, nor 
did they question Mary's entire fitness to look 
after her. The two sisters had also married, and 
when they came down town shopping or to the 
matinee or went to a tea or something like that, 
they very seldom forgot to go in and inquire how 
"dear Mamma" was, and to tell Mary how 
lovely it was of her to be so devoted. 

Mary might have married and had troubles of 
her own, but she was of different stuff, and when 
it became apparent to her that her mother would 
need some one to care for her with that filial re- 
spect and love and self-sacrifice we read of in 

32 



MARY— 

A DOVE 

books and sometimes meet with in real life, she 
cast her eyes over the possibilities of that sort 
of thing as presented in the characters of her 
brothers and sisters, and told the young man who 
had proposed to her that her duty lay in an- 
other direction and she would devote herself to 
her mother as long as she needed her. The 
young man used his best efforts to convince her 
that the Bible said parents were a secondary con- 
sideration in comparison with some things, and 
insisted that she obey scriptural injunction, but 
she was fixed in her purpose, as persons of gentle 
disposition not infrequently are when they take 
a notion; and he had to give it up as a proposi- 
tion too hard for him. Six months later he mar- 
ried another girl, as men sometimes do under such 
circumstances; and on his wedding day Mary's 
mother was so uncomfortable that her daughter 
couldn't get an hour off to go to the church to 
see what was once her chance married to an- 
other. The sisters went, however, and had a 
perfectly lovely time at the reception, and they 
brought her a piece of the wedding cake to put 
under her pillow to dream on. Mary's sisters 
were such thoughtful, unselfish girls; they only 
brought one piece of wedding cake home between 
them; but they unhesitatingly gave it to Mary. 

33 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

Nobody knows, or perhaps ever will know in 
advance, just what a woman's heart will prompt 
her to do. The Bible says the tongue is an un- 
ruly member, — and most of us know enough 
about a woman's tongue to know that the 
Bible knows what it is talking about, — but the 
tongue is not in it thirty seconds with the heart 
when that member takes the bit in its teeth and 
starts away at breakneck speed down the 
crowded thoroughfare of love. We are sure 
enough to discover what has happened after it is 
all over and the wreckage has been removed and 
travel along life's journey is once more resumed; 
but advance information is always lacking. All 
that the rest of us know is there is going to 
be a smash-up down the line somewhere, and the 
woman will be the principal and greatest suf- 
ferer. Once in a long, long time she isn't, but 
this exception is hardly worth making a note of. 

Two months after her mother died, Mary met 
a man, handsome, debonair, and delightful, but 
fond of the world and too weak to resist it. He 
was a smooth citizen, as most of his type are, 
and Mary soon grew to be proud of him and of 
the attention he bestowed upon her. She was 
told of his more or less devious ways, and she 
could not deny that there was some truth in 

34 



MARY— 

A DOVE 

what she heard, but she believed that her influ- 
ence was the one thing in the world which was 
needed to make a man of him, and she was de- 
termined he should have it at whatever risk she 
ran. She no longer had her brothers on her 
hands nor her sisters nor her invalid mother, and 
her father never was any trouble to her anyway, 
so she felt the need of some kind of burden to 
steady her, and was sure that Providence had sent 
this man to her to meet that need. There are 
such women. She knew he had wasted all his 
patrimony, but she had plenty for two and pos- 
sible additions; and this made her braver to un- 
dertake the great and good work of reform she 
had appointed unto herself to do. The man was 
a widower, and people said his wife had died of 
a broken heart; but Mary knew this could not be, 
because she had known him intimately for six 
months and he was a perfect gentleman, even if 
he did have his weaknesses, which were due en- 
tirely to his surroundings and his associations, and 
not at all to his natural inclination. And a lot 
more of the same kind, which has been before the 
public too long on such occasions to need an intro- 
duction here. 

When the time was finally ripe to have a real 
heart to heart talk with him, Mary frankly told 

35 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

him the stories she had heard about him, but 
did not ask him, after the manner of an In- 
quisitorial Council, if they were true. His 
lovely brown eyes moistened and his lip quiv- 
ered as he bowed his handsome head, admitting 
his faults and begging her to give him the one 
and only chance to save himself from himself. 
Hesitant, he lifted his face to hers and looked 
shrinkingly into her deep and tender gray eyes, 
watching him as a mother might. He feared at 
first that she was onto his curves. But no, he 
saw only an infinite pity and a forgiveness that 
passeth understanding. 

"Mary," he said, standing before her as a cul- 
prit before his judge, "I have sinned against God 
and man, and I can offer no sujfficient excuse. 
But I have seen the error of my ways, and since I 
have known you and felt the saving grace of your 
sweet influence I have begun to hope that I am 
not utterly beyond reclamation. If you will only 
help me, dear, to be a better man, I promise you, 
as solemnly as ever man promised woman, to put 
my sins behind me, and let you lead me into the 
higher and nobler way. Will you save me, 
Mary, or will you hold back the helping hand 
and leave me to perish? I love you, Mary. 
Will you help me?" 

36 



MARY— 

A DOVE 

The tears came to Mary's eyes, but not suffi- 
ciently to blind her so she could not see this 
pleading soul on the very edge of the yawning 
gulf from which she could save him, and her 
heart throbbed and struggled in her breast as if 
it would break from its bonds and go out to him. 
She had thought him handsome before; now she 
knew he was the handsomest man she had ever 
seen, because she saw beauty of soul as well as 
of body, and with a glad little cry she put out 
her hands to him. 

A dove has been known to flutter strangely 
about a low tree or bush in the edge of a wood 
and at last fly into it, with a helpless little cry. 
The naturalist, who will examine the tree when 
the bird has disappeared, will find a large snake 
asleep there. If he pursues his investigations 
further he will find the dove inside the snake. 

The man hesitated a moment, as if he could 
not believe the glad tidings she brought to him. 
He felt pretty sure it would come his way, but 
never for a moment had he imagined it would 
fall over itself in this style to get to him first. 

"All that a woman can do for the man she 
loves, Henry, will I do for you," she said, and he 
took her in his arms and kissed her. 

Of course after a demonstration of this pro- 

37 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

nounced character they were married, but they 
didn't live happily ever after and end this story. 
Not by no means, as they say in Boston. When 
the handsome and debonair man of the world had 
fully established himself in Mary's comfortable 
home and begun to draw his share of the gate- 
money, he forgot all about his promises of court- 
ship days, — ah, those promises, — and went off at 
the old pace. The first two or three years he 
confined his attentions to himself and outsiders; 
but when Mary's ducats began to dwindle and 
the receipts didn't keep up with the procession of 
expenditures, he began to address himself to her 
and inquire what kind of a wife was she anyhow 
to let her husband suffer for the necessaries of 
life. Other persons might have differed with 
Henry as to what the necessaries of life were, but 
Henry was not generalizing. He was specific in 
his ideas and it was his own life he was talking 
about, and what other persons might have con- 
sidered luxuries, nay, even extravagances, Henry 
considered absolutely necessary to his existence. 
He was raised that way, and perhaps it wasn't 
Henry's fault. 

Mary tried to explain that the expenditures 
since Henry had become a member of the firm 
had exceeded the receipts, and by generally ac- 

38 



MARY— 

A DOVE 

cepted business laws there could not remain a 
balance on hand to meet her husband's demands 
when more was going out than was coming in, — 
and he not doing a lick of work, — but Henry 
had no head for figures and was never much of a 
business man anyway; and when Mary talked to 
him like this and wept because inexorable busi- 
ness laws were inexorable, he would go forth 
to seek solace in the flowing bowl and return 
later to curse around the house like a pirate. 
Mary, as ever the gentle and yielding dove, in 
order to mollify the wrath of the man of her 
choice, finding that money was necessary in any 
work of reform, put a small mortgage on her 
property, and gladdened Henry's heart one day 
by giving him a large roll wherewith to pay off 
some poker — and other — debts of honor which 
were pressing. 

He was so lovely to her for the next few weeks 
after this that when he became cantankerous 
again she once more resorted for relief to the 
mortgage remedy. This was repeated several 
times and always with the same soothing effect 
on the agitated Henry. But mortgages are like 
morphine, they may relieve but they do not cure; 
and one fine, large day Mary discovered that her 
mortgage mine had reached the end of its pro- 

39 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

duction and her dear Henry was going to ex- 
perience such a painful shortage of funds that he 
would be compelled to drink beer, or go thirsty. 
As for herself, she did not care about the money. 
She was accustomed to sacrifices, and life didn't 
seem to be quite what it should be unless she had 
a lot of them. 

When Mary had been chased up-stairs one day 
by Henry, in a condition of unaccountability by 
reason of excessive alcoholization, and she had 
to lock herself in the bath-room to escape bodily 
injury, she paused a moment to reflect upon the 
past and to consider the future. Henry must 
be reformed, at all hazards, thought Mary, and 
the only way to accomplish it was to let him 
know thoroughly and unmistakably that every- 
thing was gone and that he was now to be the 
breadwinner, the piewinner having been knocked 
out of commission, so to speak. With this great 
and good resolve firmly fixed in her mind, Mary 
waited until Henry's impetuous spirit had cooled 
off somewhat, and the next morning, when she 
was bathing his large and aching head and listen- 
ing to his penitential promises, she cheered him 
up by telling him of her hopes of him, and how 
she would take a nice little house in a good neigh- 
borhood, and there they would be as happy as 

40 



MAR Y— 

A DOVE 

two bees in a honeysuckle. She painted such a 
glowing picture of modest comfort and cheerful 
coziness, and Henry was feeling so confounded 
bad, that he agreed to everything and told Mary 
she was the best woman that ever lived and he 
was a brute. Mary denied both propositions 
strenuously, and after fixing him comfortably 
and kissing him good-by, she went to see her 
lawyers and agents and bankers and set about 
putting her affairs into the best possible shape. 
There was enough left for a very decent nest-egg, 
however, of small size, which would come in 
handy in case of a pinch, and it was not long un- 
til Mary and Henry were in a pretty little cot- 
tage beginning their lives all over again. Mary 
was as happy as if nothing had happened and 
went about the house cooing contentedly, while 
Henry went looking for a job. 

There were plenty of people to encourage him 
in his laudable efforts to hustle for a living, and 
Mary began to congratulate herself as being the 
sole individual who had sufficient discernment to 
see that her husband had the real stuff in him. 
Thus things had themselves when one day Henry 
came home drunk. When he had money he was 
merely inebriated, or at worst intoxicated, but 
now that he was poor he was drunk. There was 

41 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

no bath-room in the pretty little cottage for 
Mary to escape into, and when Henry had fin- 
ished his observations to her on her neglect of 
him and her selfish disposal of her property, she 
simply looked like a fright, that was all. She 
tried to tell the reporter who called after it was 
over how she had saved her life, but she was so 
nervous that she was almost incoherent, and the 
story in the paper indicated plainly that the re- 
porter, with the well-known skill of his craft, had 
filled the blanks out of his own fertile, not to say 
lurid, imagination. 

Mary was simply compelled to give up the cot- 
tage and Henry, after this episode, and, her 
father being dead, she went to live with one of 
her brothers. But Henry patched up a peace, 
knowing that there was a little property left, and 
Mary was so anxious to reform him that she went 
back to him and they made another start in life. 
This time they took a small flat, and there was a 
bath-room in it, just as the advertisement had 
said. Mary was glad of this, because she re- 
membered how Henry had missed his bath when 
they lived in the cottage. 

For three months they lived in the flat, Mary 
not mentioning the fact, but none the less taking 
in plain sewing to help meet current expenses 

42 



MARY— 

A DOVE 

after Henry's personal necessities had been cared 
for out of her very small income. Every morn- 
ing Henry went out looking for work and put in 
overtime at it, but he was always at home when 
dinner was ready. One day an unknown man 
was run down by a whizz wagon, with the usual 
result, and Mary identified the body the next 
morning, after waiting up all night for Henry 
to come home. The police said the man was 
drunk or he could easily have got out of the 
way, but Mary knew better than this, for Henry 
had come home every night for three months, and 
she was so indignant that she threatened to sue 
somebody for slander. Her lawyers firmly but 
respectfully suggested that she had better let well 
enough alone and proceed with the funeral. 

Fortunately there were no children, so, after 
spending what remained of her once fair fortune 
on Henry's funeral, she went to live with her 
brother George. His wife was an invalid and 
there were five children to look after, so that 
Mary was gladly provided with a home. She 
wore the deepest black for her late lamented 
Henry, whom she mourned as one who had been 
cruelly snatched from life just as he had learned 
how to live it, but she was kept so busy 
by George's family that she had little time for 

43 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

tears. The children unanimously and unhesi- 
tatingly pronounced Aunt Mary to be the easiest 
mark they had ever witnessed; the invalid sister- 
in-law couldn't possibly be waited on by anybody 
else half so well as by Mary, and George was 
still willing and ready with his "Sister, do this," 
and "Sister, do that." 

Here we must leave Mary, the dove, not 
hilariously happy, perhaps, for that was never her 
temperament, but feeling fairly good in doing 
what she had been accustomed to do all her life. 
Some day Mary will die and go to Heaven, but 
she would be happier in the other place, for there 
she would find those who want to shove their 
burdens off onto other shoulders and those who 
are selfish and despitefully use their best friends, 
and those who ask all things and give nothing — 
but trouble. 



44 



REUBEN, A LAMB 

REUBEN was forty years old. 
"He's a lamb," said I to a lady, who 
called to see me about him, I being one of Reu- 
ben's references. 

"Bah," said she scornfully, "if he's a lamb, 
I'd like to know where you get your mutton." 

Yet that same lady charged Reuben thirty 
dollars a month for a hall bedroom which any- 
body else could have got for half the money. 
Besides, Reuben was wheedled into believing 
that he was the landlady's pet and great joy, and 
he didn't so much as bleat at the rent. That he 
was her pet I doubt, but that he was her great 
joy I am sure, so long as he gave up thirty dol- 
lars a month for that hall room. However, this 
did not continue for many weeks, for he discov- 
ered a place by accident where he could get 
room and board and heat and light for his thirty 
a month, and after telling his loving landlady 
what he thought of her, and refusing to accept 
her reduction of fifty per cent., he moved to the 
new place. 

Reuben had come to the city, with his savings 

45 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

of years as a clerk in a country store and as a 
teacher of a country school, and I think he had 
$875, or thereabouts. He never told me the ex- 
act amount, and I only knew he had anything at 
all by his asking me to tell him what was the 
safest financial institution in the town, as he 
wished to deposit his money where he would be 
fairly sure to find it when he wanted it. I judge 
there was about the amount stated, because I 
have some knowledge of the earnings of a coun- 
try clerk and school-teacher, and I knew that 
Reuben had been hard at it for not less than 
twenty years. 

He was not long in learning that his rural edu- 
cational attainments, notwithstanding they made 
him quite a prominent citizen in the country, 
scarcely fitted him for the duties of a city school- 
teacher, and he gave up the pedagogic pursuit to 
devote his entire time and energies to commer- 
cial pursuits, — ^pursuit in this instance being a 
wild chase for a job in a store. This was no 
easy task, because Reuben did not have the city 
airs and graces of the sylph-like ribbon stringers 
who seemed to be in demand at the kind of stores 
in which he sought shelter and salary, and he went 
out upon other avenues of occupation for an active 
mind and body. Chief among these was the 

46 



REUBEN— 

A LAMB 

"Wanted Male Help" columns of the morning 
papers, and here he discovered that ever present 
help in every time of trouble to the unoccupied 
with a small capital, the beneficent gentleman 
who offers a lucrative position at one hundred 
dollars a month for a partner who will put up a 
small fund as a guarantee of good faith merely, 
and not for publication at all. The one that 
Reuben found to be the most pleasing, for there 
were dozens or more of them, — and not a police- 
man anywhere in sight, — wanted only three 
hundred dollars advance, and was willing to pay 
twenty-five dollars a week salary. To this ad- 
vertiser Reuben went before consulting me; and 
it must have been easy going, for at the end of 
the first week at his new place he came to me 
radiant in face and almost gorgeously attired in 
person. 

'Tve struck a porcelain pipe cinch, old chap," 
he said to me, in the newly acquired language of 
the city. 

"You look as if you had struck a circus bill- 
board," I responded cheerfully, for I was glad to 
see Reuben on the high road to fortune, knowing 
how humble his previous path had been. 

"How do you like my glad rags anyway^" he 
asked gleefully, as he posed before me in vari- 

47 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

ous attitudes of exhibition. "This beats Hank- 
inson's Corners clean out of sight, doesn't it?" 

I assured him that it did, and asked him what 
kind of position he had secured that was panning 
out so richly. 

"Clerical; purely clerical," he said, "and I get 
twenty-five per, as a starter." 

"Do you really get it*?" I asked, knowing some- 
thing of the difference between promise and ful- 
filment. 

"Don't I?' he laughed. "How's this?' anc^ 
he shook a twenty dollar bill at me. "I blew the 
balance," he explained, to account for the ab- 
sent five. 

He would not tell me any particulars concern- 
ing his new place then, but said he would tell me 
all about it later. Early the following week he 
came again, but the "glad rags," which had been 
such a delight to him at his previous visit, had 
disappeared. 

"Well?" I broke out in surprise, "what's up*?'* 

"My glad rags'?" he answered, with a rueful 
look at himself. "I put them up while they 
were new, so that I might realize more on 
them." 

"But why did you have to*?" I persisted, 
smiling at his wan wit. 

48 



R E U B E N— 

A LAMB 

"Lost my job; employer skipped," he said in 

a jerky, disconnected fashion. "D scoundrel ; 

got my three hundred dollars; paid me back 
twenty-five dollars of it for week's salary; got 
away with two hundred and seventy-five dollars; 
don't know where he is; place shut up tight this 

morning; d fool I was not to have known 

beans when the bag was open." 

"You ought to read the newspapers, Reuben," 
I said, with a slight inclination to jeer, "and you 
would know better than to do a thing like 
that." 

"Read the newspapers nothing," he said bit- 
terly. "If I hadn't read the newspapers I never 
would have seen that scoundrel's advertisement. 
Don't talk to me about reading the newspapers, 
or I'll be tempted to do something desperate." 

Feeling the utter inutility of conversation un- 
der the circumstances, I did not indulge in it, and 
Reuben went out gloomily. Ten days later he 
had recovered from his depression. I met him 
on the street. 

"Hello," I exclaimed, at sight of him, "you 
seem to have recovered from your late indisposi- 
tion and are prosperous." 

"I am," he said with enthusiasm. "I'm learn- 
ing the ropes, old man. No more three hundred 

49 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

dollar snaps for me and paying my own salary. 
I've got a real thing this time." 

"What is it^" I asked, with a premonition of 
evil. 

"I've bought ten thousand dollars' worth of 
stock in a concern down-town as good as old 
wheat. A chap that was hard up at my board- 
ing-house sold it to me for a hundred dollars. 
He didn't know what a snap he had. He said 
he could almost guarantee that it would be 
worth five hundred dollars within a year, and he 
would not sell for less than that, but he had been 
called to his home in the West immediately, and 
he was compelled to let it go for a hundred, 
which I promptly put up." 

I asked him to let me see what he had got, and 
he showed me the papers with an air of triumph. 

"Why, man," I exclaimed when I saw the 
name of the company, "this is worth twenty 
thousand dollars instead of ten. It is one of the 
solidest small organizations in town. There must 
be some mistake." 

"Oh, I guess not," he protested. "I'm not the 
lamb to be wolfed at every turn, I hope." 

"Maybe not," I admitted, "but you come with 
me and we'll go see about this before doing any- 
thing rash." 

50 



REUBEN— 

A LAMB 

He agreed willingly enough, chaffing me, as I 
still refused to believe in his good luck. We 
reached the office of the company in due time 
and found the president in his private room. I 
knew the gentleman, and after introducing my 
friend Reuben, I showed him the stock and asked 
him about it. 

"It's a rank forgery," he said in a minute. 
"Why, the chump who bought this might have 
known it was crooked, because it bears the name 
of a man as treasurer who never was in this 
office to my knowledge, and we have never had 
any treasurer other than the one who is now at 
his desk. Come with me and see him." 

I looked at Reuben, and Reuben looked at the 
president and turned to a gray ash color. 

"Don't go to that trouble," he said slowly to 
the president, and with considerable effort. "I 
was that chump. Come on, old man," he con- 
tinued, addressing me, "let's get out of this into 
the air, or I'll smother." 

He barely managed to say "Good morning" 
to the president, and went away without the 
counterfeit that had cost him one hundred dol- 
lars of his hard-earned savings. As we wended 
our way back whence we had come, he maintained 
an impressive silence. He told me afterward 

51 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

that any language which he had ever heard of 
was totally inadequate to the occasion. He 
said that nothing in the way of expressing his 
feelings would have been appropriate but to have 
burst wide open, with a loud explosion. 

A week later he made his appearance again, 
less enthusiastic possibly, and showing a riper 
and more mature judgment. 

"Well?' I greeted him, half smiling. 

"Oh, I'm all right this turn," he grinned. 
"Got a real thing on now; can't pull me loose 
from it with a team of mules." 

"They all look that way in the beginning," I 
ventured. 

"Yes," he nodded, "but this is not that way." 

"You think so, but tell me about it and give 
me a chance to pick a flaw in it," I said. 

"Of course you'll do that," he complained, 
"but I'll tell you. You see my landlady was a 
little pressed for ready money, and she's a nice 
woman. I owed her six dollars for my last 
week's board, and when I went to pay it she 
asked me if I wouldn't lend her one hundred and 
fifty dollars and take it out in board. She 
agreed, if I would, to make the rate five dollars 
a week, giving me a chance to make a dollar a 
week on my loan. Thirty dollars for a thirty 

52 



REUBEN— 

A LAMB 

weeks' loan of one hundred and fifty dollars isn't 
bad business, is it"? And I'm getting it back at 
the rate of five dollars a week. Now if that 
isn't a cinch and a half, what is it?' 

"I can tell you better at the end of thirty 
weeks. A great many changes may occur in 
thirty weeks. Men have died and worms have 
eaten them in less time than that." 

"It isn't so mighty long, I guess," he con- 
tended. "I expect to stay right here for thirty 
years. The fact of the business, old man, is that 
I've come to stay." 

He went away presently in good spirits, say- 
ing he was going to see a man who had been talk- 
ing about giving him a clerkship at fifteen dol- 
lars a week to start with, and I began to think, 
as I was already hoping, that Reuben had done 
well in his combination of board and finance. 

But I make no claims to infallibility and I was 
not surprised to find that once again was I mis- 
taken. Two days after his visit announcing the 
loan to his landlady he came back in a most dis- 
turbed, not to say dilapidated, condition. 

"Anybody dead*?" I inquired hastily. 

"I wish to thunder there was," he replied with 
great earnestness. "Do you know that landlady 
of mine — " 

53 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

"I don't," I broke in, not wanting to be made 
party to any disclosures. 

"I mean you have heard me speak of her*? 
Well, by Zucks, she's gone, and my one hundred 
and fifty dollars was the means of it." 

"You don't say I" I exclaimed in real astonish- 
ment. "How do you mean she is gone*?" 

"Gone and got married to the star boarder last 
night; and this morning the happy couple is non 
est comeatihus^ and the real estate agent has 
swooped down on the house and we've got to get 
out. Lord knows where she's gone, but that 
hundred and fifty would buy tickets for two to 
Europe or any old place. I've paid my board 
for thirty weeks in advance and have got it to do 
all over again." 

He used a large quantity of language further 
to express his feelings, and I tried to offer some 
consolation, for Reuben was really suffering, not 
only pecuniary loss, but loss of confidence in and 
esteem for a woman who had been kind to him. 
But, like Rachel mourning for her children, he 
refused to be comforted, and left me at last, 
swearing viciously at everything in sight. 

By this time I had begun to think that Reuben 
would be taught something by example, although 
he might be beyond the power of precept, and I 

54 



REUBEN— 

A LAMB 

hoped that while his tuition was rather expensive 
it would nevertheless be worth to him all it had 
cost up to date. 

Ten days later I met him hurrying into a sky- 
scraper elevator with an energy that seemed equal 
to hurling him clear out through the roof. 

"Hello, Reuben," I said, "you appear to be do- 
ing business." 

"I am," said he, stopping to shake hands. 
"I've got a genuine job now where I don't have 
to put up money, nor buy bonds, nor pay my 
board in advance," — he chuckled at this thought, 
— "and I have a guarantee of ten dollars a week 
and a percentage." 

"What doing?' 

"Selling an office article of general use; it's a 
new-fangled eraser and blotter and one thing or 
other combined, and I cleared up fifteen dollars 
the first week I tackled it. That's not so bad for 
an old man, is it*?" 

"Have you got the fifteen*?" I inquired. 

"I will have it this afternoon at three o'clock." 

Three days later he sauntered into my place 
as if he had time to spare. 

"Made enough money to retire so soon"?" I 
inquired in salutation. 

"Not hardly, I guess," he replied curtly. 

55 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

"Then why ain't you trying to"?" 

"I'm looking for a job." 

"What's the matter with that last real thing 
you had? I thought you had your hand shut 
on fifteen dollars at least." 

"So did I, but my respected employer asked 
me to wait a week. I asked him why I had to 
wait when I had already turned over forty dol- 
lars spot cash into the office, and then he got 
sassy, and I turned to and mopped the floor up 
with him. Didn't get my fifteen, though, and 
he had me arrested for arson, or something, that 
cost me twenty-five more. It was worth it all, 
though, to lick him the way I did, and I'm not 
kicking. I wish I could tangle my hands in the 
hair of that landlady, or get mixed up with the 
bond broker or the capitalist or some of the 
others that are lying in wait for the unwary." 

There is no doubt that they would have fared 
badly. 

Reuben looked really pleased with the idea and 
satisfied with himself, and after telling me what 
he thought of metropolitan manners and morals, 
and assuring me that he would no longer pursue 
a peace policy, he left me to my usual cogitations. 

Some weeks later I met him one afternoon on 
a ferry-boat headed toward the setting sun. 

56 



R E U B E N— 

A LAMB 

"What's the proposition now?" I asked, 
laughing, for Reuben had become pretty much 
of a joke to me. 

"Home," he replied briefly. 

"Not going to leave the city, are you?" 

"Unless something happens to this boat or the 
train in the next twenty minutes," he smiled. 

"What's wrong? I thought you had come to 
stay?" 

"So did I, but the money run out." 

"All of it?" 

He thrust his hands far down into his trousers 
pocket and brought forth a railroad ticket, a few 
odds and ends, and some paper money and coins 
of silver and copper. He put the ticket and the 
odds and ends back and counted the money spread 
out in his open hand. 

"There's that much left," he said, "three dol- 
lars — and forty-seven cents." 

"But you had a lot more than that when I 
saw you last?" 

"I know it quite well." 

"What did you do with it?" 

He came over close to me and whispered, 
"Wall street." 

"Oh," I fairly snorted in his face, "I thought 
you knew better than to try that." 

57 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

"So did I," he sighed; "but I didn't, and now 
I'm going back to Jersey with what I have left, 
and give the lightning-rod man and the gold brick 
representative a chance at it. Good-by, old man, 
and much obliged to you for your valuable as- 
sistance." 

He shook hands hurriedly and rushed away for 
his train, and I saw him no more. But I have 
heard from him once, when he wrote to say that 
he had married a widow with six children and a 
farm. From another source I learned that the 
friend who introduced him to the lady had over- 
looked the children in enumerating her posses- 
sions, — also a mortgage on the farm. 



58 



BESSIE, A BIRD 

THAT Bessie was a bird, not a young chap- 
pie, with more hair under his nose than 
he knows under his hair, — and only a mighty 
small sprinkle of a mustache at that, — between 
the seashore and the tip-top of the Rocky moun- 
tains, would think of disputing for a moment. 
Indeed and indeed, she was the very identical 
Summer Girl of story and song, who wore a 
cluster diamond engagement ring on her fairy- 
like finger. Cluster rings are not ordinarily the 
correct conventional kibosh, as it were, for en- 
gagement decorations, but Bessie had done such 
a rushing heart to hand business since the grand 
opening day of the season that she would have 
been compelled to cluster her engagements or se- 
cure an extra supply of fingers, which anybody 
knows, who knows anything at all about manual 
anatomy, would have made her hands look like 
freaks; and no girl cares to look like a freak, un- 
less Fashion decrees that it is good form to do so. 
When Fashion so decrees, all women think they 
are freaks if they don't look like freaks. This 
seems rather strange and peculiar perhaps; but it 
is none of our business, and we had better stand 
from under. 

59 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

So Bessie wore a cluster engagement ring, — 
forty-seven diamonds all around and an opal in 
the center, for luck. 

What Bessie didn't know about capturing 
Cupid could have been written on a copper cent 
in three-sheet-poster type, and if she didn't take 
up a collection of soft-hearted, likewise headed, 
swains on the first day of her arrival at any sum- 
mer hotel, selected at random, she retired to her 
downy couch some time before the noon of night, 
remarking, "Psha," or "Rats," or something ele- 
gant and recherche like that; and the next morn- 
ing she would fly away to where there was some- 
thing doing. One man was nothing to Bessie, 
two were scarcely worth mentioning, and three 
cheered her up a bit; but what she wanted was a 
gang, or she wouldn't stay in the game. So 
there. 

It didn't make any difference to Bessie whether 
she was staying at the Ilwyn Inn, at six dollars a 
minute, moving amidst the giddy whirl of our 
highest and most expensive social circles, where 
the men wore coaching-coats reaching to their 
heels, and the women wore the waists of their 
evening gowns tending in the same direction; or 
she was at the Hillside Hotel, at six dollars a 
week, with all the comforts of home on the side, 

60 



BESSIE— 

A BIRD 

and the men wore celluloid collars, and the 
women wore the satisfied and supercilious ex- 
pression of ladies who are not compelled to re- 
main in the city during the heated term, — I say- 
it didn't make any difference to Bessie; she was 
always ready for business, and she wouldn't more 
than get her baggage pried open before she was 
arrayed in some kind of a fluffy stuff frock, with 
a dove of a pink parasol and a dream of a hat, 
gallivanting around the green lawns, looking for 
game; or basking on the beach, in a bathing-suit 
of profound and peaceful blue to match the sea 
and sky, apparently the world forgetting, but not 
by the world forgot, because her net was spread, 
and there were no manly footprints in the sand 
with the heels turned toward it. 

What the other girls said about Bessie was 
a-plenty; but Bessie did not permit it to disturb 
her summer serenity. Well she knew that they 
were mean, horrid, envious, gossipy, jealous, 
peace-destroying creatures anyway; and so long 
as she had the men on the string, she could af- 
ford to let them sniff at her all they pleased, and 
be hanged to them. And they did sniff at her, 
and sniff and sniff, while Bessie just went ahead 
corralling the chappies and having the time of her 
life. But Bessie was a generous little creature 

61 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

and she had no wish to hold a mortgage on every- 
thing in sight; so when she picked up an X-ray 
kind of a fellow, who saw right through her and 
knew what a fickle, frivolous fabric she was, she 
hastened to ease him off onto the other girls, and 
let them have at least that much of a chance to 
think that all their nice summer clothes hadn't 
been made for nothing. 

Although they may look a good deal alike, 
there are some persons who know the difference 
between a reedbird and an English sparrow. 

There is, however, no rose without a thorn, 
and the thorn in Bessie's nosegay was that cir- 
cumstances, over which she had no control, ren- 
dered it impossible for her to open, at every sum- 
mer resort she frequented, a flower and candy 
booth, with a book and notion store in the rear. 
If she could have done that she would have been 
able to declare weekly dividends of a hundred per 
cent., because her devoted admirers would have 
kept her supplied with new and fresh stock every 
day, free of cost. It really was amazing the 
amount of candy and flowers and books and in- 
cidentals that girl accumulated during business 
hours, and she never spent a cent for advertising. 
They even followed her by mail and express 
from the last place she had brightened by her 

62 



BESSIE— 

A BIRD 

presence, and if it had only been possible for her 
to realize on the goods, she could have used 
money for kindling-wood. 

As for the contributors to this summer cam- 
paign fund, it made no odds whether the con- 
tributor had a salary of ten dollars a week or an 
income of ten dollars a minute, Bessie had a 
strong pull on whatever there was of it, and the 
infatuated gosling wept because there wasn't 
more to give up. As the Goddess of Get-it-all, 
Bessie was a towering success; and her blind 
devotees could not be brought to realize that be- 
yond a few fleeting and transitory smiles they 
would never get so much as the shadow of a 
dividend on their investment. But who heeded 
that? They were booming Bessie, and Bessie 
was a bird. 

When the first chill of the dying summer shook 
the leaves from the roses and Cupid carelessly 
tossed a coat of brown across his arm, Bessie 
gathered her possessions into a pile, omitting 
masculine hearts and hopes and vows, and re- 
turned to town, where she resumed business at the 
old stand. She had bidden tearful farewells to 
each and every "gentleman friend" with whom 
she had enjoyed hammock harmonies and piazza 
platitudes and moonshine musings and romantic 

63 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

rides and delicious drives and shady strolls and 
lakelet loafings and twilight trysts and seaside 
saunterings and dreamy dinners and soulful sup- 
pers and the entire shooting-match of tender mo- 
ments; and immediately thereafter had forgotten 
that they ever existed. Nor did it concern her 
greatly whether there should be any existence for 
them hereafter, seeing that there were others. 
She had given up everything that she could not 
pack into a trunk or a bag, and was turning her 
back with indiiference on the entire circumfer- 
ence of the field of her summer triumphs. True, 
she held on to the cluster ring; but the books had 
been given to the chambermaids, the candy had 
gone glimmering among the things that used to 
be, the flowers had faded and fallen into the 
river of Lethe; and she felt that she was per- 
fectly free to stack herself up against any new 
condition which might present itself, or be pre- 
sented. 

The Summer Girl is a good thing, and by the 
same token the Winter Girl is no slouch. 

The Bible says the leopard cannot change his 
spots nor the Ethiopian his skin; but Bessie, be- 
ing a Bird, which is neither leopard nor Ethi- 
opian, she very rapidly changed her skin from a 
rich, sun-kissed, tawny tan to a rose pink, lily 

64 



BESSIE— 

A BIRD 

white; and, whereas she had been spotting every- 
thing in the verisimilitude of a man that had 
enough left out of his salary to spend his vaca- 
tion at the class of places she affected, she now 
set about changing her spots and getting some- 
thing that had the price of theater tickets, din- 
ners, suppers, or luncheons down-town, and other 
agreeable and fattening adjuncts, which make 
life in large cities so outrageously expensive that 
persons of thoughtful minds often wonder how it 
can be that anybody has money enough to stand 
it except theater managers, restaurant keepers, 
and cabmen. There must be other persons neces- 
sary to constitute the population, but surely they 
are only transients. 

For two or three summers and winters, also 
springs and falls, Bessie lived this double life; 
then she experienced a slump in the popular taste. 
The market did not seem to be nearly so well sup- 
plied with flowers and candy and books as for- 
merly, and the cluster ring business had de- 
creased almost to a point of emotional bank- 
ruptcy. It had to be a warm summer indeed, 
these times, if Bessie saw even a brilliant or a 
moonstone coming her way; and at the last place, 
when the clerk of the hotel flashed his shirtfront 
shiner across the counter at her one morning, ac- 

65 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

companied by his sweet persuasive smile, she 
really thought he was one of the most interesting 
gentlemen she had met in ages. Bessie thought 
the depression was due to the disastrous influence 
of the Trusts, or something like that; but that 
wasn't it. 

Bessie was getting to the end of her string. 
Generally speaking, a bird is not a long-lived 
creature; and if it desires to have a permanently 
feathered nest, it doesn't want to waste too much 
time in the preliminaries. 

It was pretty hard lines for Bessie, knowing as 
she did how much there was in it if one could 
only get at it; and she did not like it a little bit. 
But this vale of tears is literally loaded with 
things people don't like, and Bessie had to take 
hers, just as the others of us do, or give up the 
vale of tears, which looks too much like jumping 
out of the frying-pan into the fire. Of course, 
there is some chance, by modern theologic prop- 
ositions, that there isn't any fire; but most of us 
prefer to take our chances with the cold, cold 
world. As Bessie discovered, it may not be just 
what we yearn for, but one may lean up against 
the sides of it without getting blistered. 

Bessie stood her changed condition until she 
was thirty years old, hoping for a reaction; but 

66 



BESSIE— 

A BIRD 

it did not come. Her summer-girlery had 
slipped forever from her grasp, the spirit of her 
blossoming time had faded with her bloom, and 
Bessie finally married a prominent citizen in a 
country town, and became a leader in its highest 
social circles. 

She may not have been the Bessie of yore, but 
something of the old spirit remained, because, on 
one occasion, when a friend of the family compli- 
mented her upon her appearance at the opening 
dance of the Rosebud Sociable Club, her fond and 
admiring husband proudly replied: "You bet your 
life, Bess is a Bird." 



67 



EZRA, A SHARK 

THE shark is a formidable, voracious, and 
cartilaginous creature, without conscience. 
He formerly had a conscience, but it all went to 
cartilage and that's what's the matter with him 
to-day. 

The first time I ever saw Ezra was at a mo- 
ment when I felt a pressing need of seeing some- 
body with money. Not much money, you will 
understand, but enough to spare a little for my 
urgency. I told my wants to a friend in need 
— quite as much in need as I was, by the way, 
— and he referred me to Ezra, a man whom he 
knew who was not a professional money-lender 
(the which I feared almightily), but was a man 
of means, willing to accommodate, albeit a close 
man and perhaps hard, for poverty must needs 
be treated with severity, lest it become tyrannous 
and regardless of the rights of others. The 
reader may have observed the despotic insistence 
of a thirsty man in pursuit of the price of a drink, 

Ezra conducted his financial business at his 
residence after his work of the day as a general 
trader was finished; and thither I pursued my 

68 



EZRA— 

A SHARK 

way, with much fear and trembling, one evening 
after I had partaken of my frugal repast. As 
collateral for the loan I was expecting to ne- 
gotiate I carried with me certain rare old jewels, 
left to me by a deceased and miserly uncle, who 
would never have left them if he could have 
taken them with him to that burn whence no 
traveler returns. 

"Well, young man," said Ezra, when he had 
admitted me to his ill lighted, ill ordered, ill 
smelling den, "what is it?" 

"I am informed, sir," I responded, bowing as 
the Children of Israel bowed to the Golden 
Calf, "that I may secure from you a much needed 
loan of a few dollars." 

"Got'ny security?" he asked, before he had 
said whether he could accommodate me, or had 
inquired what amount was required. 

"Here," I said, taking the box of jewels from 
beneath my cloak, "here are some valuable things 
which you may look at." 

"Huh, huh," he gruffled scornfully, peering 
into the box as if my heirlooms were the veriest 
trash, "is this all?" 

"It is enough for the amount I desire," I said, 
resenting this uncalled for depreciation of val- 
ues. 

69 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

"How much do you want?" Evidently the 
heirlooms were worth something. 

"One hundred dollars for one year." 

"What; a hundred dollars in good money for 
rubbish like that*?" 

But I was not to be frightened from my pur- 
pose by argument of that kind, and in due course 
I had convinced him that he was making a safe 
investment. 

"Gimme your note for the amount," he said, 
when we had agreed. 

"Why a note?" I asked. "The jewelry is in 
your hands, and I can't get it until you get your 
money back." 

Ezra was quite indignant. 

"This ain't no three-ball shop, young man," 
he squeaked at me, "and you will give me your 
note, or get no money." 

I wrote a note for one hundred dollars, payable 
in twelve months, and handed it to him with the 
jewels. He placed the jewels in his safe, and 
began a calculation of some kind on the note. I 
stood waiting for what I had come there for. 

"Twenty dollars, please," he said, extending a 
grimy hand with an unctious slickness that was as 
easy as any shark ever turned over in the water 
to get its human victim by the leg. 

70 



EZRA— 

A SHARK 

"What's that for^" I asked with some curi- 
osity, giving him the last twenty dollars I had on 
earth, which he took in voraciously. 

"Good night, young man," he said, holding the 
door open suggestively, "I surely am obliged to 
you for your kind patronage, and I hope you will 
come and see me again when you need anything 
in my line. I always strive to please. Good 
evening." 

But this was something more than I was going 
to submit to without a struggle. Indeed I was 
ready to make a direct and personal matter of it. 

"Where's the hundred dollars I was to get?" I 
asked, with perceptible warmth. 

"Why, my dear boy," he replied, trying to edge 
me nearer to the door, "don't you know how to 
calculate interest yet'? One hundred dollars for 
a year, at ten per cent, a month, is one hundred 
and twenty dollars, ain't it"? The note you give 
me was for only one hundred dollars, so I had to 
ask you for twenty dollars extry, which you have 
just paid me. I am ready to take the note for 
the balance of the interest you owe me, though 
I've got no security except the brass-works and 
glass you handed in. Now I must say good 
night, for I'm busy, and — " 

What followed need not be set forth here 

71 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

where all is joy and peace. Suffice it that I al- 
most entirely forgot myself, and when I had con- 
cluded my negotiations, other than of a financial 
character, with Ezra it might well be said of him 
that he looked as if he had passed through a hard 
winter. Needless to say I came away without 
the hundred dollars, but with all my other ef- 
fects. When this affair occurred I was a stranger 
in that community, but when it became known 
what I had done to Ezra I was hailed with loud 
acclaim as a public benefactor, and my fortune 
was made. 

When a shark has once become the Terror of 
the Seas nothing but an outsider dares go after 
him on his native heath. Suggested by my ex- 
perience, came many stories to me of Ezra in his 
relations to his fellow beings. 

It was said that he was actually the employer 
who, when two of his men were blown up into the 
air by dynamite and did not come down for half 
an hour, docked them for lost time. But this, of 
course, could not be true, for Ezra knew noth- 
ing about the explosion until the men had been 
paid off and discharged. I do know, though, 
that when his wife died he asked two neighbor 
young men to sit up with the remains, and 
charged them for keeping the gas turned on full 

72 



EZRA— 

A SHARK 

at three burners when one turned low was plenty, 
especially, he said, as his wife had always been 
troubled with weak eyes. 

When Mrs. Ezra departed this life she was 
sick only ten days as a preliminary to the final 
dissolution, pneumonia being the fell destroyer. 

On the day of the "funeral obsequies," as the 
editor of the local paper feelingly referred to the 
final function, when some sympathizing friend 
or other was tendering a few appropriate testi- 
monials to Ezra the bereaved one sighed as if 
there were, notwithstanding his sad bereavement, 
some recompense in his loss. 

"True, my friend, this is good deal of a de- 
privation," sobbed Ezra softly, "but every cloud 
has got some silver lining." 

"Yes, yes," admitted the sympathizer, with- 
out knowing exactly why he did, or what 
amount of silver there was in the lining. 
• "Yes," sniffled Ezra explainingly, "if she'd 
been took down ten days later I'd had to paid a 
dollar for her membership in the League of 
Woman Church Workers that ain't due till next 
week, and won't have to be paid at all now." 

I learned of another transaction of Ezra's in 
which he showed his nature as a gluttonous grab- 
ber. He had secured the assistance of a school- 

73 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

teacher in preparing some circulars to work up a 
new line of trade that promised good results. 
The teacher had a family to support and needed 
all he could make, but he was willing to take a 
contingent fee, and agreed on a small guarantee 
with a percentage that would result comfortably 
if the scheme were successful. The teacher's 
work was done well and was worth at least 
twenty-five dollars. When Ezra had received all 
the returns, in the course of three or four months, 
he came to his assistant with tears in his eyes, say- 
ing he had lost three hundred dollars on the deal. 
He was willing to admit that the teacher was in 
no wise to blame for the hard luck that was com- 
ing his way, but he thought it would only be a 
Christian and friendly act if the teacher would 
scale his bill a little from the twenty-five dollars, 
and it certainly would make Ezra's burdens less 
difficult to bear. The teacher was a decent 
enough sort of fellow, even if he was poor and 
had a family to support, and he agreed to ease 
up on Ezra in his sore affliction. After some dis- 
cussion, Ezra contending that a real Christian 
spirit would be satisfied with five dollars and the 
teacher thinking that ten would be nearer right, 
they compromised and the teacher accepted seven 
dollars and a half, which Ezra paid with many 

74 



EZRA— 

A SHARK 

protestations against the insatiate greed of all 
creditors. 

Accidentally, some three months later, the 
teacher discovered how Ezra lost the three hun- 
dred dollars. It was a very simple thing and 
quite in accordance with Ezra's usual manner. 
In the calculations of profits on the job, Ezra had 
figured that he ought to clear eighteen hundred 
dollars above all expenses, which was about two 
hundred and fifty per cent, a month on the in- 
vestment. However, when everything was done 
and all the returns were in, Ezra found, to his dis- 
appointment, that he would clear only fifteen 
hundred dollars, which of course, by Ezra's calcu- 
lations, was a loss to him of three hundred dollars, 
and it was no more than right that the teacher 
should bear his part of it. 

Early in Ezra's career he undertook to keep a 
boarding-house, his wife being an excellent cook 
and housekeeper; and they made a good start and 
received the encouragement of the church that 
Ezra attended, because he had family prayers 
every morning in the parlor and insisted on all the 
boarders being in attendance. The boarders, be- 
ing professing Christians, could not, of course, ob- 
ject to this form of worship, but after the first 
week Ezra opened the services by taking up a col- 

75 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

lection, and the boarders created such a dis- 
turbance that he had to go out of the business, or 
be churched. Ezra was much pained at this 
demonstration and said that he did not see why 
the laborer was not worthy of his hire. 

On another occasion Ezra agreed to pay a 
teamster twenty-five dollars for a hundred loads 
of earth to make a fill in a washout through a 
field he owned. The teamster got his material 
from a farmer who, in digging a ditch, had more 
of the earth than he knew what to do with, and 
as a favor to him and for a dollar or so extra the 
teamster dumped a hundred and ten loads into 
Ezra's washout, but made no charge for the ten. 
Ezra refused to pay the bill for one hundred 
loads because the teamster had violated the con- 
tract, Ezra contending that one hundred and 
ten loads of earth was as much of a violation of 
the contract as ninety loads would have been. 
The teamster could not afford to sue, and he 
settled with Ezra by allowing him twenty-five 
cents a load for the extra ten loads, just as if 
there had been ten too few instead of ten too 
many. 

It is not necessary to proceed further with the 
story of Ezra. He is still doing business at the 
old stand, but one of these days he will die and 

76 



EZRA— 

A SHARK 

go over to the other shore, and, mark my words, 
he will not have been there fifteen minutes until 
he is trying to get Saint Peter to go in with him 
on a scheme to charge admission at the Pearly 
Portals. 



77 



ARAMINTA, A SPRING CHICKEN 

^/TT TELL, Araminta is no spring chicken." 
V V These words were spoken by a chorus 
of feminine voices, emanating from the mem- 
bers of the Peace-on-earth-good-will Society, of 
Ennyold Place, where I was spending my sum- 
mer vacation. The Society met on Wednesday 
afternoons in open session, at the houses of the 
members, to discuss ways and means for the fur- 
therance of various charities and good works, and 
I found attendance upon its exercises an agree- 
able divertisement in the necessarily quiet life of 
the community of which I was temporarily a 
part. If a little gossip were indulged in now and 
then; if some things were said behind the backs 
of absent members that might not have been said 
to their faces; if the conversation were at times 
seasoned with spice rather than with myrrh and 
frankincense, no harm was intended and no harm 
was done, because, as every one knows, what- 
ever and allever is said at the meetings of these 
village societies, which have for so many years 
held honorable place in rural social traditions, is 
always held in the most inviolable conjfidence. 
The tongue of malice has laid itself in bitterness 

78 



A R A M I N T A— 

A SPRING CHICKEN 

upon statements contrary to this view, but let us 
remember with Shakespeare: 

"Men, that make 
Envy and crooked malice nourishment, 
Dare bite the best." 

Note the fact, please, that the incomparable 
author says "men," not women. Women are not 
given to such speaking, and whatever of slander- 
ous report concerning the gossiping character of 
these village aid and sewing societies has been 
bruited abroad may be safely attributed to the 
masculine tongue. The women have something 
else to talk about. 

I knew the Araminta referred to in the open- 
ing remark of this sketch; and knowing her as I 
did, I am urged to insist that the assertion made 
by her sisters of the P-o-e-g-w Society should be 
modified to some extent, or, at least, some of its 
angularities, quite apparent to the casual ob- 
server, should be softened away into the soothing 
shadow. 

Of course, if they were referring to last spring, 
that is to say to the spring last past, it would be 
true that Araminta was what they said she was. 
But one spring does not make a chicken any 
more than one summer makes a swallow. Per- 

79 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

haps I may have reversed the order of my prem- 
ises in this syllogism, but I am sure the indul- 
gent reader will overlook cold and calculating 
logic in the discussion of a lady's character, and 
accept a self-evident proposition, without going 
into the complex details of a technical argument. 
If, on the other hand, to be born in the spring is 
sufficient cause for a characterization as vernal, 
then was Araminta a living and moving refu- 
tation of the statement under discussion, because 
she was born in the lovely month of May, 

ty-nine years and five months ago. 

To prove that Araminta, — Miss Araminta, I 
might, or should, say, but I will not, because I 
do not want to, — was what I insist she was, I 
desire to call the reader's attention to a few in- 
stances taken out of her life and experiences in 
Ennyold Place, where she first saw the light, and 
will no doubt last see it. Araminta was neither 
plump nor pretty, nor was her temper at all 
times as angelic as it is popularly supposed that 
that of the heavenly messengers is; but Araminta 
was known to be very comfortably provided with 
this world's goods, and she was in respect of this 
held by some, I may say most, of those of the 
masculine gender to be extremely attractive both 
in person and mind. Unfortunately, Araminta's 

80 



A R A M I N T A— 

A SPRING CHICKEN 

fortune did not come to her until she was older 
than she had been previously, and its tendency 
was to revive hopes in her bosom which only the 
young or the wealthy can afford to consider as 
within the probabilities. I really would not 
have thought it of Araminta, as thoroughly 
seasoned as she was, but money is no respecter 
of persons and exerts a mysterious and irresistible 
influence upon its possessors, which is as inex- 
plicable as it is diversified in its phases. 

In this instance, it placed the person of 
Araminta in the garb and colors suitable to a rose- 
bud just making her debut, and led her manners 
into a friskiness of demeanor and her language 
into a coquettishness of expression which put de- 
corous and sensible nerves quite on edge. I ex- 
perienced this feeling at my first meeting with 
Araminta; and when, in response to my usual 
salutatory civilities and compliments to the fair 
sex in general, she tapped me reprovingly and 
unexpectedly on the arm with her fan and ex- 
claimed with a simper, "Oh, you flatterer," I 
will admit, now that it is all over, that my first 
impulse was to escape ere it was too late. But 
I digress. Let me to the instances that I wish to 
present to the reader. 

Several summers ago a flashily attired person, 
81 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

of somewhat effusive manner and with nothing 
apparently to do except to exalt the horn of 
plenty and empty it upon some chosen com- 
munity, appeared in Ennyold Place and took 
apartments at the City Inn, — it had been called 
the Village Tavern before Ennyold Place had de- 
veloped into a resort for summer boarders, — an- 
nouncing that he was a gentleman of elegant 
leisure who was seeking a delightful haven of re- 
laxation and rest, which he had at last found in 
Ennyold Place. He made the acquaintance of 
the local editor, and of other prominent citizens 
who were wont to bask on the shady side of the 
Inn on summer afternoons; and at the Saturday 
night hop he was presented to the ladies, and 
danced four times, quite spontaneously, with 
Araminta. The next morning as she came trip- 
ping down to the post-ofRce he met her by chance 
on t'he street, and they took a long and delightful 
walk. It is said by those who saw the couple 
that morning that Araminta stepped along as if 
she were on springs. In the evening he took sup- 
per with her, and they sat till quite sometime 
after curfew on the vine-clad piazza, listening to 
the nightingale's note that rose tremulous and 
tender from the moon-kissed magnolia on the 
lawn. 

82 



A R A M I N T A— 

A SPRING CHICKEN 

A week later, lacking three or four days, 
Araminta blushed to hear the rumor coupling her 
name with his. But the gentleman was not talk- 
ing all moonshine and molasses to Araminta. He 
was a business man, he said, when he was not on 
vacation; and he told her of the marvelous for- 
tunes made daily in stocks in the great city's mart, 
where he had become thoroughly worn out by 
his labors, rolling up wealth in vaster quantities 
than he could possibly spend unless he built li- 
braries with it; and there was even competition 
in that direction, so that he really did not know 
what to do with his money. 

Araminta knew somewhat of the power of gold 
and longed for greater knowledge come of greater 
possession. She listened to his stories, and 
timidly asked, if it would not be too much trou- 
ble to him, would he be so kind as please to in- 
vest a thousand dollars for her when he returned. 
Of course, he would be only too glad to do any- 
thing for a lady, he said, and for her — with a 
dim, delicious dawdle on the her — more than 
any one. Whereupon he bit his lip as if vexed 
at himself, and Araminta experienced a glow of 
feeling too delicious to express in ordinary lan- 
guage. 

That very afternoon he was unexpectedly 

83 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

called to the city, and she gave him her check 
for the amount, although he said it did not make 
a particle of difference, as he would buy the stocks 
and so forth with his own check, and she could 
return him the change when he sent her a state- 
ment of account, plus the profit. But she would 
not hear to such an arrangement, and he went 
away with her check, telling her good-by, oh, so 
tenderly, and assuring her with deep earnestness 
that he would return within a few days, bring- 
ing to her the profits on her first investment. The 
profits would not be small, he said to her, but 
they were nothing compared with the happy 
knowledge that he had been the humble instru- 
ment in bettering her fortune. Then he went 
away, and she had letters from him for several 
weeks ; but he did not return as he had promised. 
Neither did the thousand dollars. 

Now, would any but a spring chicken have 
done what Araminta did"? 

On another occasion, Araminta met a charm- 
ing gentleman^ — the italics are hers, — on a train. 
He was not formally presented to her, but he was 
handsome and politely attentive, and offered to 
put the window up for her or down for her, or 
to get a glass of water for her, or two glasses, or 
to loan her his newspaper, — all done so gra- 

84 



ARAMINTA— 

A SPRING CHICKEN 

ciously that she instinctively knew he was a 
perfect gentleman. He knew some friends of 
hers in Ennyold Place, and when he told her 
good-by at the station, — he was booked for a 
point further down the road, — he gave her his 
solemn promise that he would be sure to call when 
he came to town, which would be within a few 
days. 

A week later he was in town and called, and 
Araminta enjoyed a delightful moonlight buggy- 
ride with him. He held her hand lingeringly in 
his as he told her good night, murmuring that he 
could say good night until it were to-morrow. 
Nay, he even pressed her hand to his lips, and 
Araminta was afterward in such tremors of 
ecstasy that she could not go to sleep till she 
had counted ten hundred thousand little Cupids 
jumping over a fence into her heart. He went 
away early the next morning, to return again on 
the following Sabbath, when he went to church 
with her and looked so divinely sacred as he sat 
by her side, listening rapturously to the pastor's 
words, that Araminta felt afraid to touch him 
lest he would disappear upward. 

That afternoon they took a long walk, and in 
a fern-fringed dell, far from the madding crowd's 
ignoble strife, by the music of a tumbling water- 

85 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

fall of crystal clearness, he told her that he loved 
her and — kissed her. Ah, the rapture of that 
kiss I She shrank away at first, trembling and 
afraid, but with a joyous expectancy that over- 
came fear. He took her hands in his and she 
clung to him as the fragile vine to the great oak. 
He held her thus to his throbbing bosom for a mo- 
ment only, then put her away from him with a 
deep sob, saying that it could not be, because he 
was so unworthy. She looked at him with in- 
credulous eyes, inquiringly; and with surging 
sighs that shook his manly frame to its pro- 
foundest depths, as the earthquake shakes the 
mountains, he told her that he had been unfor- 
tunate in speculation and that his accounts were 
five hundred dollars short. It was his misfor- 
tune, not his fault; but the punishment would be 
the same, and he would not, nay, he could not, 
ask her to share his lot of shame with him. 

"Only five hundred dollars between me and 
thee, between our hearts' happiness forever," he 
groaned, as the tears came to his beautiful brown 
eyes and he stretched his arm about her waist. 
"How cruel, cruel, cruel the great cold world is," 
he sobbed. 

"Would five hundred dollars save you, dar- 
ling*?" she whispered. 

86 



ARAMINTA— 

A SPRING CHICKEN 

"It would make the accounts balance; no one 
would be the wiser, and I could once more face 
the world as an honest man," he replied, in broken 
tones. 

The next morning she drew from the bank the 
amount he wished, and gave it to him in bills, so 
that there would be no telltale check. He 
kissed her good-by, once, twice, thrice, a dozen 
times, and was gone to return within three days 
to claim his good angel as his darling wife for- 
ever — and he never came back. 

Will any thoughtful person say that even a 
pullet would have permitted herself to be cajoled 
into such a contribution of love and lucre? 

Araminta had many other trying and mortify- 
ing experiences, as all persons of large suscepti- 
bilities always have, especially those of the fem- 
inine gender who have a nervous horror of being 
alone in the house; but one more instance will 
suffice for the purpose of this tale. When the 
wife of John H. Huskins died, leaving John H. 
a widower of sixty, — hale, hearty, and prosper- 
ous, — the general belief was that he would be 
married again within the allotted time, which is 
usually put at two years, although I never could 
quite understand why a definite limit should be 
placed upon grief — why sorrow and loss should 

87 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

be measured and cut off like calico, and why a 
consensus of public opinion should decide that 
what was mourning yesterday should be rejoic- 
ing to-morrow. But those reflections are not per- 
tinent to this occasion. Mr. Huskins deceived 
both young and old by not marrying at the end 
of the conventional two years. Several persons 
were not only deceived, but they were disap- 
pointed. However, that is purely personal, and 
I shall not mention the ladies' names. At the 
end of two years and six months the entire com- 
munity of Ennyold Place was thrown into a state 
of tenuous and tremulous excitement one evening 
by beholding Mr. Huskins at church with Ara- 
minta. How long this startling condition of af- 
fairs had been in operation not even the best in- 
formed members of the P-o-e-g-w Society had the 
remotest idea, and everybody felt piqued at some- 
body for not having discovered it sooner. What 
the community thought of Mr. John H. Huskins 
did not greatly concern him, and he did not pro- 
crastinate to gather public sentiment in his case. 
As for Araminta, she had passed the moment of 
dalliance and delay when coy maidens cry, "But 
this is so sudden," and so it was that Araminta 
became Mrs. John H. Huskins with promptness 
and dispatch. 

88 



A R A M I N T A— 

A SPRING CHICKEN 

And how pleased she was. She actually stuck 
her visiting cards, bearing her name, "Mrs. John 
Henry Huskins," all around her looking-glass, so 
that she would be sure not to let its delightful 
novelty escape her; and she thought her husband 
was the Julius-Caesar-George-Washington-Napo- 
leon-Bonaparte of modern history. There were 
those who despitefully said, "Old Huskins is 
closer than the bark on a tree," and that he 
squeezed a dollar till the seed came out of the 
date on it; but not one said that he was not ex- 
tremely well-to-do and was not getting more so 
just as fast as he could. Some persons even said 
that Araminta had done mighty well. Indeed, 
it was in response to a suggestion by some one 
that he was too old for her that the opening re- 
mark of this chronicle had been made. 

Araminta had never been to say extravagant, 
but she had been accustomed to have everything 
in reason that she wanted; and her bonnets and 
shoes and gowns and gloves always had a refresh- 
ing appearance of newness. She had control of 
her own money and spent it as she pleased, al- 
beit at times she feared that she might lose it by 
bad investments, or by the connivance of crafty 
men who knew that women never had any busi- 
ness sense. It was a great relief, therefore, to 

89 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

Araminta when she married to feel that at last 
she knew a man in whom she could repose the ut- 
most confidence, and who might be depended on 
to look after her money as if it were his own. 
With this sublime and beautiful trust in her hus- 
band, she gave into his hands the control of all 
her property, and settled down to a life of such 
perfect contentment as she had never known be- 
fore. It was to her as to those who run a long 
distance to catch a street-car, and catch it. 

By and by, when her wedding things began to 
grow shabby, when her bonnets appeared to be 
appealing for help, when her shoes showed signs 
of service, when her gowns were faded and for- 
lorn, and her gloves yawning at the seams, 
Araminta, innocent as a little child of some hus- 
bands' ways, and wondering a little, perhaps, 
tripped lightly to her dear John and prettily told 
him how frayed and frazzled she had become 
and how she must have some new things to 
wear, so that he would be as proud of her as 
when she was his bride. Mr. Huskins grunted 
out something or other and gave her five dollars. 
The tears came into Araminta's eyes, and her hus- 
band lectured her on the sins of female extrav- 
agance. Two years elapsed before Araminta's 
wedding things had arrived at a condition of 

90 



A R A M I N T A— 

A SPRING CHICKEN 

service that even her husband was compelled to 
admit needed improvement, and he permitted her 
to have fifty dollars of her own money with which 
to replenish her wardrobe. But he did not re- 
cover from the shock of separation from such an 
amount for weeks, and Araminta found no pleas- 
ure in the necessary things she bought. She 
tried to convince him that the money was hers, 
and that she had a right to do with it whatever 
suited her best. 

"You are young and giddy," he said to her, 
"and need somebody to look after you." 

A woman must indeed be in sore straits when 
she does not respond to compliments to her youth, 
but Araminta showed no sign of appreciation. 

"But, John," she contended, "I only gave you 
control of the principal, not the interest." 

"All money is alike to me, Araminta," he re- 
plied, "and my control covers everything. I 
know what is best for you, and shall conduct this 
family accordingly." 

Further argument availed nothing but con- 
tinued domestic infelicity, and Araminta was 
forced to submit to her husband's financial man- 
agement, taking a dime with a grateful heart and 
rejoicing over a quarter as at the coming of a 
dear friend. And it was her own money, too. 

91 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

Now would an old hen ever have got herself 
into such a coop as that? 

Indeed she would not. Therefore I repeat 
what I said in the beginning, to wit, that 
Araminta was a spring chicken, any statement of 
the P-o-e-g-w Society to the contrary notwith- 
standing. 



92 



"N 



HIRAM, A HOG 

O wonder," remarked a thoughtful and 
discerning person, as he contemplated 
the actions of a domesticated specimen of the sus 
scrofa^ "no wonder, they called it a hog. They 
certainly couldn't have selected a more fitting 
name." 

The young of this species is commonly called 
a pig; but the hero of this history, although once 
young, as by a peculiar natural law everything 
must be sometime in its life, was never a pig. 
That was entirely too mild a term to fit his dis- 
position. True, his mother at table was wont to 
reprove his manner of eating by saying, "Hiram, 
you little pig"; but this was merely a mother's 
metaphor and could be accepted only in that sense. 
At other times, when she observed him greedily 
gobbling up to himself what really belonged to his 
little brothers and sisters or other children, she 
would say admonishingly, "Now don't be a pig, 
Hiram," and Hiram would obey her; he wouldn't 
be a pig, he couldn't; he was a hog right from 
the start, and he never made any effort to take 
in his sign. 

When Hiram was old enough to go to school 
he was sent to a pretty little schoolhouse not far 
from his home, and quite a new sphere was opened 

93 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

to him. He hardly thought there could be so 
many creatures in all the world, but he knew 
now there must be, for he saw them with his own 
eyes all around him, as many as fifty or a 
hundred; and every one of them had something 
or other that Hiram wanted. He was quite timid 
the first day, and the strangeness of it all made 
him shy and backward, and he was not in his 
usual form by a great deal. He was six years 
old, and one at that age is not as bold and con- 
fident as he is after he has been knocking around 
the world for thirty or forty years. But Hiram's 
temperament was of the kind that went after 
things early, and the second day of his educational 
experience he came home after school looking as 
if he had been playing center rush for both foot- 
ball elevens at one and the same time. Parental 
inquiry evolved the fact that little Hiram had 
snatched a stick of candy out of the hand of one 
of his schoolmates, and the kid had not waited to 
discuss the ethics of the case, nor to offer the gentle 
reproof of Hiram's mother about not being a pig. 
He had simply walloped Hiram from the cradle 
to the grave, and left the remnants to be swept 
up by those near and dear to it. The candy was 
knocked into the dust and dirt of the playground, 
but the victor and rightful owner had rescued 

94 



HIRAM— 

A HOG 

it, and after cleaning it on his pants leg had stuck 
it proudly into his mouth, while Hiram was pull- 
ing himself together and wondering what had 
fallen on him. 

The intellectual development of the hog kind 
is not phenomenal. There are educated hogs, but 
they are found only in museums. 

Hiram should have sized up the owner of the 
candy before he grabbed it, but he was too anxious 
to get his hands on the other one's goods to think 
about anything except his own wants, — and there 
is a difference, mind you, gentle reader, between 
wants and needs. The candy boy was a tough 
kid, who knew his rights and dared maintain 
them, and "the way he done Hiram up was a- 
plenty," as he afterward explained it to a group 
of admiring schoolmates. 

Sometimes a hog will break into a garden full 
of good things and eat his fill undisturbed; and 
sometimes he isn't so lucky. 

Hiram acquired more sense as he grew older, 
and he became more prudent; but his selfishness 
grew apace, and he settled down to the belief 
that the world was his oyster if he only kept his 
nerve with him and reached for it. This ambi- 
tious purpose showed itself in numerous and vari- 
ous small matters during the earlier period of his 

95 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

career, say after he was of age. If Hiram got 
into an open street-car, he always took the end 
seat, when he could, and he held it against all 
comers ; if he went into a dining-room, he was sure 
to make a push for the best table in sight; if 
he were in a crowd at any time or place, he shoved 
people right and left and forged his way to the 
front, no matter whether the front offered su- 
perior advantages or not, so long as it put him 
ahead of others in the squeeze ; if other passengers 
stood up in the cars, Hiram sat down, and nobody 
got Hiram's seat unless it was somebody Hiram 
felt assured could be of greater value to him in 
one way or another than the seat was; if there 
was a rush for any desired place or thing and 
Hiram was in it, he never stopped to consider 
those about him, but gave himself first thought 
and hustled for Hiram; if a woman had a place 
to sit down in the car, it was never one that Hiram 
had given to her, unless he was going to leave the 
car; if there was one biscuit on the plate, and ten 
people were hungry, Hiram got the biscuit; if 
anybody had to give up anything to somebody 
who had no claim to consideration other than 
courtesy, it never was Hiram. Never. 

"Huh," he would grunt on such occasions, "I 
pay my good money, and I'm going to have what 

96 



H I R A M— 

A HOG 

I pay for. Why not? If people want things, 
let them rustle for them like I do. Huh, they 
wouldn't give up anything for me, and why should 
I give up anything for them? I guess not." 

The learned professions did not appear to 
Hiram's grasping mind to present a field from 
which very remunerative returns were to be 
rooted by his far-reaching, all-penetrating, and 
perseveringly persistent snout; so he determined 
to enter the domain of commercial business, with 
an eye to politics as soon as he had accumulated 
sufficient campaign collateral to make politics 
practicable and possible, without having too much 
of the dirty work to do with his own hands. 
Not that Hiram was lazy or was suffering with 
fatty degeneration of the conscience, for he was 
neither, but he knew that politics was almighty 
up-hill work until a good start had been made, 
and he knew there was no starter on earth like 
unencumbered cash. 

The hog is a shrewd beast when hungry, and 
he is almost always hungry. 

Business being Hiram's choice of means to an 
end, he went at it as he did the lesser affairs of 
life, and he grabbed up everything within reach 
as he went along. No man got anything out 
of Hiram except for value received, plus a liberal 

97 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

commission for wear and tear, and it wasn't a 
thousand years until he had absorbed all the small 
establishments in his contiguous territory, and had 
begun to nose around for those in the outlying 
districts. When he had the whole field to him- 
self he bossed the tan-yard pretty much as he 
inclined, saying, "the public be dinged"; and he 
made a profit on the management. Not a few 
persons kicked at this jug-handled arrangement; 
but Hiram was well aware that life's pathway 
was not strewn with roses and other floral trib- 
utes all along the route, so he permitted the people 
to enjoy themselves kicking, and later charged 
it up to them in the bill. When bills were not 
paid promptly, Hiram invoked the aid of the law 
and squeezed the inconsiderate, rebellious, and 
dishonest debtor until he squealed. 

"Huh," he grunted, "if I obligate myself to 
pay any amount, large or small, I always meet 
the obligation. I don't ask any more of any- 
body than I am perfectly willing and ready to 
do myself." 

Which was absolutely true, albeit allowance 
should always be made for the weak and the 
wobbly. 

While Hiram was amassing wealth at a rate 
that made all his neighbors dizzy, and caused 

98 



H I R A M— 

A HOG 

them to wonder why they couldn't do the same 
thing, it looked so easy, and while he was winning 
a place for himself in the portrait galleries of 
those periodicals which publish fearful and won- 
derful portraits and pulsating biographies of in- 
dividuals who are successful in life, he stopped 
by the primrose path of dalliance long enough to 
get married. A sweet little woman, who had 
known Hiram in his younger and better days 
and loved him, for Hiram, despite his dominating 
weakness, was not wholly unlovable, went about 
her cottage home, silent and blighted forever by 
his treatment of her. But Hiram, with his aspir- 
ing ambitions, should not be blamed for declin- 
ing an alliance with this simple and lowly crea- 
ture and marrying a fabulously rich woman when 
he needed money in his business, should he? 

"Huh," he grunted, "if Susan had had a chance 
to marry a millionaire, I wouldn't have stood in 
her way a minute. No, sir, I'm not that kind, and 
I would have got out of the way if it had busted 
my heart wide open. What's one broken heart 
to the happiness of two whole ones?" 

Hiram's condition, if not his theory, changed 
materially after his marriage to the rich woman. 
She had social aspirations but no position to match 
them, and Hiram had been too busy rooting in 

99 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

the fields of his endeavor to sit around the draw- 
ing-room a great deal, so they found themselves 
with an abundance of society facilities, or rather 
the one mastering facility, and no society, and 
Hiram at once began to grab for it. He knew 
that business did not open the doors on the in- 
side of which he and his wife desired to get, but 
he knew that statesmanship did, or came nearer 
doing it than anything else except luck, and that 
Washington, D. C, was not only the Paradise 
of Politics, but was also the Paradise of Parvenus, 
so he made a break to get into the political push. 
Was it difBcult of accomplishment"? Is it diffi- 
cult for a good man to go right? Wasn't he a 
millionaire? Didn't the country need more 
"business men" in the halls of legislation? Say 
"Yes" to each of these interrogations, and 
you will guess right every time. 

Hiram had an interview with the Chairman of 
the County Executive Committee, or whoever it 
is who knows how much money would be desir- 
able, and learned that a contribution to the cam- 
paign was something that would never, no never, 
be forgotten. It was only a state campaign, and 
had no national significance, — except to Hiram, — 
but money is almighty handy in any kind of a 
campaign, and the Ex. Com. and the rest of the 

100 



H I R A M— 

A HOG 

Workers in the Vineyard fell over themselves in 
gathering in the plentiful plunks of Hiram. He 
also got his picture in the party papers as a patriot, 
of the loftiest and noblest and simplest type, who 
hesitated at no sacrifice nor expense for the welfare 
of his country. It cost him twenty-five thousand 
dollars, and hurt his pride to look at the news- 
paper cuts of himself, but Hiram knew a paying 
investment when he had it spread out before him. 
The party leaders wanted to do something more 
for Hiram, in recognition of his generous and 
noble services, but Hiram magnanimously declined 
any reward for doing a duty that any man who 
was a real patriot should only be too proud to 
do. In two or three succeeding campaigns Hiram 
was again magnanimous and declined to accept 
any reward for doing his duty to his country. 
Then it became necessary for the legislature of 
his state to name a United States Senator. The 
leading candidate for the position was a man who 
had been working for his party for forty years, and 
was still a poor man, — this is no joke, although 
it sounds so much like one as almost to deceive 
experts, — and the other two candidates were old 
wheel-horses who deserved the highest office in 
the gift of the people of their state; yet, notwith- 
standing these things, Hiram sent his barrel to 

101 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

the state capital, with both heads out and the 
bung wide open, and after the votes were counted, 
Hiram was a U. S. Senator-elect. 

In the meantime he was not neglecting his 
purely commercial interests and had organized an 
endless chain series of banks, had got his grip 
on several railroads, had steered two or three 
steamship lines into one, had consolidated his 
various manufacturing interests into as many- 
Trusts, and was doing the land in a private car 
that was a wonder of mechanical skill, or was 
sweeping the sea in a yacht that was a miracle 
of marine architecture. 

That well-known and one-time popular aria, 
"They Kept the Pigs in the Parlor," does not 
refer to society persons, and up to this time Hiram 
shone socially only in the coruscating corridors of 
the most expensive hotel on earth, and Mrs. 
Hiram's aspirations still were as empty as a 
champagne bottle the morning after; but they 
maintained a saving silence, sawed wood, in 
other words, until they could spread their lay- 
out at the National Capital and play the 
game as it should be played proper. The 
day came at last, and Hiram began his opera- 
tions in statecraft by taking a lease on the 
biggest house in town for six years, with the 

102 



H I R A M— 

A HOG 

privilege of renewal for ninety-nine years if he 
saw fit; and he opened the ball with a brass band 
and a corkscrew, regardless of expense. He kept 
it up to concert pitch right along, and at the 
close of the season he had to have a cordon of 
police around the front door of his palatial man- 
sion, to prevent the hoi polloi from piling up on 
the hoz aristoi^ until the casual observer couldn't 
tell whether it was an elaborate social function or 
a stampeded political mass-meeting. But there 
was no question in the minds of the society re- 
porters, and they did not hesitate to say that 
Hiram had hogged the social slop of the most 
brilliant season the Capital had ever known. 
They didn't say it in those exact words, perhaps, 
but that is the idea they intended to convey. The 
diplomatic circle was a unit in pronouncing 
Hiram's toot and scramble the most rusher shay 
and commilfawt they had ever gone up against, — 
Hiram being a member of the Senate Foreign Af- 
fairs Committee, — and while the ladies of 
the real old Washington cliff-dwelling fam- 
ilies vowed and declared there were bristles 
on Hiram's back, they were forced to let 
their daughters go to his house or lose 
face with the Real Thing in society, which was 
no more to be thought of than that they would go 

103 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

to church in an unpretentious house of worship 
somewhere up a side street. 

Hiram had a couple of stepdaughters in his 
entourage^ who had been pictured in the papers 
and mentioned in the society columns as "the 
belles of the Capital," and whom Hiram, with 
his usual grasp on the situation, as on everything 
else, concluded were available to scoop a title 
with, and he missed no opportunity to swipe 
every titular dignitary that showed up in Wash- 
ington, and gently waft him in the direction of 
an easy mark. Dukes were scarce that season, 
but English Lords, French and Italian Counts, 
German Barons, and Russian Princes were plenty 
as blackberries in August; and Hiram picked the 
Best in the Bunch, and had him safely landed 
when Lent was over. 

"Huh," grunted Hiram, when the business end 
of the affair was settled, "they come high, but 
I'll have what I want if it busts a hole in the 
bank." 

A United States Senator, even with more 
money than is necessary for political purposes, 
wasn't so warm socially, as others than Hiram 
have learned; but the stepfather-in-law of an Eng- 
lish Lord was hot stuff, and Hiram was in the 
swim up to his chin, and he was there to stay 

104 



H I R A M— 

A HOG 

as long as there was an issue of Burke's Peerage. 
Society may not have thought Hiram was the 
only pebble on the entire seacoast, but his Lord- 
ship was society's long suit, and the tail went with 
the hide, so Hiram got in, and his wife also, and 
he was satisfied. 

It's all the same to a hog in a potato patch of 
rich picking whether he got there through a gap 
in the fence or through a gate left open for his 
convenience. 

With Hiram's high social connections in Eng- 
land, he had a good strong pull on the people 
over there who had money that was simply wast- 
ing away with dry rot, and he headed several mil- 
lions of it in his direction. It went into all sorts 
of great American interests, where Hiram invari- 
ably owned at least fifty-one out of every hundred 
shares ; and it wasn't so long until he had several 
more Trusts under his thumb, which he sagaciously 
merged into one gigantic Octopus, whose tentacles 
ramified the whole commercial field and enabled 
Hiram to fix prices and dictate terms as he darned 
pleased, or words to that effect. 

Still, he was only a mere United States Senator, 
and Hiram chafed under the galling sense that 
there were higher offices in the gift of his grateful 
countrymen, and he didn't have them all. A 

105 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

member of the President's cabinet was more con- 
spicuous than a Senator; the Vice-Presidency was 
obscure but honorable, and its possibilities were 
vast; and the Chief Executive*? Men of less 
executive ability than Hiram had succeeded in 
reaching the exalted position. Hiram felt the 
pulses of a lofty ambition throbbing in his manly 
bosom ;„he stood in the Valley of the Possible and 
looked along the ways leading to the summits 
of the Mountains of Attainment; one peak rose 
above its fellows, and on that the hog eye of 
Hiram rested; he listened to the onward tread of 
millions of his fellow-citizens, and he knew by the 
rumble and roar that most of them were behind 
him; he lifted his face to the illimitable heavens, 
and paused a moment in his successful career, 
to reflect. 

"Huh," he grunted, "I wonder if the Presi- 
dency ain't about my size? I guess I might as 
well try it on. Somebody else will if I don't, 
and who has got a better right to it than I have? 
Say?" and he winked a deep, dark, and deliber- 
ate wink. 

The razorback hog has been known to root up 
the third row of corn through a crack in the 
fence. 

Hiram was a razorback. 
106 



MARIA, A CAT 

MARIA was a cat from the start. Like 
Minerva, she sprang full-orbed into being, 
and not unlike that illustrious, although somewhat 
mythical and masculine, lady, she went on the 
war-path comparatively early in her career. I 
first knew Maria when she was a senior — if any- 
thing feminine is ever senior — at a Seminary of 
Learning, and she everlastingly had her claws out 
and her back up. Ordinarily cats are peaceful 
enough until they are rubbed the wrong way of 
the fur, or are subjected to some other upheaval 
of nature, but Maria was not of the ordinary type ; 
her fur had all grown the wrong way and the 
ignorant person who, in that kindliness of heart 
which beautifies so many simple and unpretentious 
lives, sought to rub Maria discovered in a very 
short time that he or she had, to all intents and 
purposes, lit in a briar patch. Generally speak- 
ing, there is in a Seminary of Young Things 
more innocence and kind-heartedness to the square 
inch than anywhere else on this green earth, and 
the result was that Maria's fur was frequently 
rubbed, and the way she would pounce onto some 

107 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

poor little mouse of a schoolmate really called for 
the intervention of divine Providence or the S. 
P. C. A. people, whichever could get there first. 
It may be explained here, for the purposes of 
elucidation chiefly, that while our common house 
cats, — Felinus Domesticus^ or some such botanical 
name as that, — have their claws in their toes, 
Maria had hers in her tongue, and everybody who 
reads the Bible, as everybody should, knows that 
the tongue is an unruly member. It is a well- 
known fact in natural history, or if it is not it will 
be as soon as this story becomes generally distrib- 
uted, that those animals which are the fiercest, 
that is to say, whose tempers are the touchiest, are 
also noted for higher ideas of the proprieties, 
moral, personal, and general. They have a more 
strongly developed sense of order and they seem 
to be controlled by some system. They are an- 
noyed by trifling disarrangements, and they are 
sticklers for small observances. For example, the 
lion, a quick-tempered animal, is much more fas- 
tidious than the hippopotamus, which may be said 
to be almost stupidly disposed to take life easy; 
the tiger will flare up in an instant on a point 
that an elephant would treat with silent contempt; 
the lithe and lissome leopard is much daintier in 
its habits than is the hog, and while all of us 

108 



MARIA— 

A CAT 

have seen puss wash her face a dozen times a day, 
have any of us ever observed that a dog or a 
boy bothered greatly whether his face was ever 
washed or not? 

Not unlike other members of the animal king- 
dom was Maria, and she was more so as she 
grew older. If she came into a room where there 
was the faintest odor of tobacco smoke, she sniffed 
like a war-horse smelling the battle, not afar off 
as the Scripture hath it, but immediately around 
the corner, and consequently that much more vig- 
orously; and no man who knew her dared come 
into her presence after imbibing an encouraging 
tonic and nerve strengthener until he had chewed 
a whole handful of cardamom seeds, or coffee- 
grains, or cloves, or desiccated lemon-peel, or some 
other of the well-known and highly popular post- 
potation disinfectants. "Disgusting" was a 
favorite adjective of Maria's and her excessive 
use of it almost degenerated into incurable in- 
temperance. So firmly had this idea fixed itself 
In Maria's mind that she did not hesitate to say 
that she would not marry a man who used liquor 
or tobacco, even if he were the last man on earth. 
Under some circumstances this tremendous sacri- 
fice for a principle might have meant a great deal 
to the world's future development but, in view of 

.109 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

the fact that other women held such different 
views, the last man would have been mated even 
if he had missed Maria. 

When Maria was thirty-five years old, a period 
at which most single women reach the acme of 
their powers of disagreeableness and sublimation 
of perfection possessed only by themselves, — when 
they have a tendency in that direction, — she be- 
came deeply interested in the heart-beats of her 
niece, a sweet and charming girl, who was being 
sought in marriage by a most excellent and ex- 
emplary young man, who, by industry, sagacity, 
and enterprise, had doubled the comfortable patri- 
mony left to him by his father ten years previ- 
ously. He was thirty-one, Maria's niece was 
twenty-one, and everybody said they were just 
made for each other, — that is, everybody did ex- 
cept Maria, whose fur had, in some manner or 
other unknown, been rubbed the wrong way. She 
did not deny his superior qualities, his sterling 
worth, and his good repute; but she knew he 
smoked, she had seen him take a drink, she had 
heard him swear, he admitted shamelessly that 
he had bet a hat on the election, and she believed 
from what she had heard about men in general 
that he was no saint. With these fatal defects 
in his character, she feared that her niece's happi- 

iio 



MARIA— 

A CAT 

ness as his wife would be forever jeopardized. 
The niece did not think so, neither did her par- 
ents nor her friends, but Maria had higher ideas 
than any of the disinterested persons cited above, 
and one day she called the niece into her sanctum 
sanctorium^ so to speak, where she held an execu- 
tive session with her and told her all about Rich- 
ard. She painted the terrible picture in such 
lurid and lush colors that the poor child went 
away in tears, and was harassed by doubts and 
fears until she couldn't rest. She knew her aunt 
was old enough to know more of men than she 
did, and she thought she did know, which was why 
she was troubled at what she had been told. That 
evening when Richard called — as he did seven 
evenings in the week, not counting matinees when 
he could get off for an hour or so, or could call 
her up over the telephone — she was so distrait — 
all lovers know that all the dictionaries can't give 
that word its full uncomfortableness of meaning — 
that he insisted on knowing what was the matter. 
She was loath to tell, because she didn't want her 
dear aunt mixed up in it, but he insisted and in- 
sisted and kept on insisting so persistently that 
she found she never would have any peace of 
mind until she shared her knowledge with him, 
so she told him everything Maria had said about 

111 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

him, not abating one jot nor tittle. Having done 
this, she began to feel the baleful influence of 
Maria and looking straight at him, she asked him 
for an explanation of the whole dreadful story. 
Richard felt all stuffed up for a minute, when 
his sweetheart had finished the recital of her 
aunt's charges, then he recovered his speech and 
caught the girl in his arms. 

"Why," he burst forth, as he kissed her a good 
one, "the d d old cat." 

That was all the explanation he had to offer, 
and it was so cogent and so convincing that, with 
a glad little cry of joy, Fannie gave Richard a 
great, big, earnest, enthusiastic hug and they were 
married and lived happily ever after. 

I suppose nobody on this finite and terrestrial 
sphere will ever be able to explain why or how 
some things happen that actually do happen, all 
human expectation to the contrary nothwithstand- 
ing, and I imagine the time will never come when 
mortals will cease to say, "God moves in a mys- 
terious way His wonders to perform," but at 
thirty-six Maria found a perfect man and mar- 
ried him. Possibly a consensus of public opinion 
would not have pronounced him perfect, but if 
there was one thing more than another that Maria 
felt herself to be infinitely superior to, it was a 

112 



M A R I A— 

A CAT 

consensus of public opinion. She was a consensus 
unto herself that snapped its fingers at all the rest 
of mankind. What suited her was the perfect 
thing. 

Everybody in the community was surprised at 
the time, and the man was surprised afterward. 
He was sorry enough he hadn't been surprised be- 
fore. The fact that Maria had a fair fortune in her 
own right was some compensation to him, for he 
was positively no good on earth he was so harm- 
less. He didn't smoke nor chew nor drink nor 
bet nor work nor do anything, and one would have 
thought Maria's claws must hereafter be sharp- 
ened on other people, but you may be sure Maria's 
choice had his cross to bear, although he was per- 
versely reticent on that point. He knew that 
there could be no rose without a thorn, and while 
Maria was pretty thorny, her competence, which 
enabled him to live in ease, barring certain dis- 
comforts of a purely domestic and personal char- 
acter not to be mentioned in a printed document, 
was a rosier proposition than any that he had had 
experience with. But deep in his quiet bosom 
a hope was secretly nourished that some day, per- 
haps, he might get even, and the community in 
which he had figured chiefly as a cipher might 
know that he was capable of resentment. He 

113 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

would not have put such a feeling into words for 
the world, but he bided his time and was as one 
of the inarticulates. 

P. S. The word "inarticulate," I may explain 
here, has two definitions: one, the natural history 
definition, meaning without backbone; the other, 
applying to language and meaning speechless, that 
is, without the power of articulating. Of course, 
as used here, the word can only mean speechless- 
ness. 

Luck, they say, comes to the lame and the lazy, 
and although Maria's husband was not lame, the 
adage was verified in his case, for one day Maria 
caught a cold, which developed into some one of 
the million or two things a cold can develop into 
unless one uses all the remedies kind friends hasten 
to offer, and her lofty career of earthly perfec- 
tion abruptly terminated. The bereaved husband 
was dignified in his grief and the entire community 
was dissolved in gossip as to whether or not he 
would marry again. When the will was probated 
it was learned that the husband was to have only 
the use of the income of the property for life, 
and could make no disposal of any part or parcel 
of it. 

A year later, apparently still as mild and harm- 
less as ever, he erected over Maria's final rest- 

114 



MARIA— 

A CAT 

ing place a simple slab of granite so gray, bear- 
ing the inscription: 

Requies Cat in pace. 
And the entire community wondered at his cour- 
age, for it believed in ghosts. 



115 



SIMON, THE ORNITHORHYNCUS 

IT is remarked in the preface of this volume of 
natural history — and readers should always 
read prefaces, because they are not infrequently 
the most interesting chapters of the books they 
introduce — that "natural history has lost much 
by the vague general treatment that is so common. 
What satisfaction would be derived from a ten 
page sketch of the habits and customs of Man 
in general ? How much more profitable it would 
be to devote that space to some particular individ- 
ual." Had you noticed that in the preface? 

Adopting this suggestion, the logical result 
would follow that I give the reader some incidents 
in my own experiences with the subject of this 
sketch, but I doubt if its very personal character 
would not be a bar to a general interest in it. Not 
that my self-conceit has been greatly increased by 
my acquaintance with Simon, the ornithorhyncus, 
for the vast majority of my readers, at least of the 
male kind, have had experiences with him not less 
thrilling than my own — in numerous instances I 
am glad to say much more thrilling and frequent 
— and they would laugh me to well deserved scorn 
if I sought to set forth my puny efforts as worthy 

116 



S I M O N— 

THE ORNITHORHYNCUS 

of their consideration, much less their admiration 
and applause. 

I do not hesitate to say that there is no animal 
known to civilized man so general in its distribu- 
tion throughout all the habitable and habitated 
portions of the world as the ornithorhyncus of this 
species, and I doubt if there is a spot on earth 
that has not been visited by it, at one time or 
another, in its ramifications for its lawful prey, 
because it may be said never to seek any other. 
While there may be individuals of its kind that 
stand out with some degree of prominence among 
their fellows, they are all so nearly similar in 
their manners, and lack of them, I may add, that 
it would be indeed difficult to particularize. 

I fancy that Simon had the ethnological ear- 
marks differentiating him from others of his 
species, but I know that on several occa- 
sions, when I had undertaken to exploit him 
in the hearing of certain acquaintances of mine, 
they sniffed at me scornfully and slightingly 
and spoke slangily, saying: "Come off. If you 
want to tackle the true kibosh, get onto the 
brand we use." I admit that I did not clearly 
comprehend what they meant by an expression 
of that kind, but the tones of their voices indicated 
to me vaguely that if I esteemed Simon as an ex- 

117 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

traordinary, or unusual, or even as a representa- 
tive, specimen, I was profoundly and grossly in 
error. For this cause, as well as others not less 
personal, and, I might add, painful, I hesitate in 
going into details concerning Simon, except merely 
as one of many, — and not E Fluribus Unum 
either. 

I shall say at the outset of Simon's brief biog- 
raphy that man does not hunt the ornithorhyncus ; 
he doesn't have to; the ornithorhyncus hunts him, 
and I may add, parenthetically and also pathet- 
ically, that it always finds him. 

Simon struck my trail for the first time when 
I was a happy, joyous, thoughtless, careless boy in 
college. Youth and a sense of great irresponsi- 
bility made me quite indifferent to him and his 
demands then, and I led him a merry chase, oc- 
casionally falling into his clutches, only to escape 
again and furnish him with further cause for pur- 
suit. His last hunt for me was just before I was 
graduated, and on that felicitous occasion I par- 
leyed with Simon and compromised with him by 
permitting him to capture my father, an excellent 
and most worthy gentleman, whereby Simon was 
satisfied and desisted from further pursuit of me. 

When I became my own man and went out into 
the vasty expanse of a cold and heartless world 

118 



S I M O N— 

THE ORNITHORHYNCUS 

to confront its conditions, I soon found them such 
that Simon, different but the same, once more 
struck my trail and gave the long, low howl of 
a discovered scent, — if he got a cent he was 
lucky, — and I knew too well that I was being pur- 
sued. I called to my aid all my knowledge of the 
science of woodcraft and towncraft and every 
other old craft I had ever heard of, but they were 
all of small avail, and final escape from Simon 
was impossible. No matter to what subterfuges 
of wind, water, or wood I resorted, Simon solved 
every problem I presented, penetrated every dis- 
guise, and thwarted every strategy. He was too 
shrewd for me always, and his greed was never 
satisfied while I had anything into which he could 
stick his voracious and rapacious claws. 

Fortunately for me, the Fates were sufficiently 
propitious to enable me to save my skin ; but that 
was about all, and I was a wreck, de jure as well 
as de facto^ on each and every occasion after Simon 
had finished with me. Latterly I am immune, I 
fancy, because I have not heard his dismal and 
discouraging howl on my track in a long time, 
although I know well enough that he is still on 
the hunt for other unfortunates. I know this, for 
I have heard them pounding the earth in their 
rapid retreat. There is one thing that may be 

119 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

trutntully said of Simon's prey, — they always give 
him a run for his money. In contemplating my 
immunity, I am constrained to believe that in time 
a man may even lose the scent that he hath, and 
surely Simon has no use for that kind. 

But I am extending this confessedly brief sketch 
beyond the limits of a confession and making it 
a dissertation, or an autobiography. Thousands 
and thousands of persons, equally as worthy of this 
world's esteem and this world's goods as I am, 
not to mention others more so, know Simon so 
much better than I do that it is unpardonable 
egotism for me to set myself up as an ornithorh)^!- 
cus expert. My object in this sketch, as in those 
accompanying it, is to try to give some new facts 
in natural history, and upon this particular sub- 
ject I feel that it is but justice to others to leave 
the details to them. 

In conclusion, I perhaps should say, for the 
benefit of the ignorant, that the ornithorhyncus is 
an animal with a BILL. 

"Oh, say, are you ever going to settle*?" 



120 



HESTER, THE MILITANTRUM 

WITHIN a few years past there has appeared 
in various parts of the world a peculiar 
creature, of which there was no record in natural 
history and consequently no name in its recognized 
nomenclature. By the sound of its voice and by 
certain unmistakable physical characteristics it 
was understood to be of the feminine gender and 
was so accepted generally, although an effort was 
apparent on its part to prevent its sex from be- 
ing known, as if it were a disgrace, or at least a 
misfortune, to be a female. It had no young 
following it, nor did it display that instinctive 
feeling for offspring which was a noticeable symp- 
tom of femalism in the entire animal kingdom, as 
far as was known to naturalists previous to the 
appearance of the militantrum. It was never seen 
roaming wild in the forests; and, although fre- 
quently developing in centers remote from large 
cities, it almost immediately manifested a marked 
preference for the congested haunts of men. It is 
on this account that I have classed it among tame 
animals, although I believe a thoroughly domesti- 
cated specimen is not known; while its actions, 

121 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

on all occasions when it has been afforded full 
scope to its unrestrained inclinations, clearly in- 
dicate that it is one of the wildest, most untamable 
and uncontrollable animals of which we have any 
authentic account. 

Its origin is clouded in mystery and there are 
those who attribute it to autogenesis, making it an 
autogenesister, so to say, to the normal members 
of the human family, although most of them de- 
cline to claim kin with it. But whatever its ori- 
gin, we have it with us increasingly; and no re- 
strictive legislation seems possible of enactment. 
Natural historians, notwithstanding its visible and 
audible increase, — not only in this country, but 
all over the world, — have hesitated to determine 
definitely a name for it; but militantrum so dis- 
tinctly defines its militant individuality and its 
tantrum activities that I shall designate it by that 
title in this sketch, there being nothing more ap- 
propriate in any known vocabulary. Some 
natural historians of the prehistoric type have gone 
so far in their prejudice against new discoveries as 
to insist that it should not be classed under natural 
history at all, but under unnatural history, a 
question which shall not be discussed in this place. 

I had at frequent intervals seen the militantrum 
in my wanderings up and down the land, but other 

122 



HESTER— 

THE MILITANTRUM 

duties, demands, and desires prevented a closer 
acquaintance until I was called on business to a 
locality in the west which had become practically 
overrun by militantrums, notwithstanding the 
earnest protest and combined efforts of many of the 
best citizens against such an unconstitutional as- 
sault upon the palladium of their liberties. 
Knowing something of conditions in England, I 
was called into council and at once suggested that 
the authorities offer a reward of five dollars for 
every scalp of a militantrum that was brought to 
the sheriff of the county, and by this means fur- 
nish the sinews for a war of extermination. My 
suggestion was received with every demonstration 
of favor and enthusiastic approval; but, after 
some consultation among themselves, held with 
their feet up against a red hot stove, they con- 
cluded to defer action until popular sentiment was 
so thoroughly aroused that a bounty of 
twice the amount I had named would be 
gladly offered. In the meantime the mili- 
tantrums increased mightily; and if there 
was anything they saw that they wanted, they 
took it, and if they didn't see what they wanted, 
they demanded that it be handed over anyhow. 
At the same time the men were compelled to shave 
their whiskers off to prevent their forcible appro- 

123 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

priation and adoption by the militantrums, and 
they furthermore kept their pants in safe-deposit 
vaults while they slept. Naturally enough, the 
men protested; but man's previous protestations to 
petticoats had been of such a totally different char- 
acter that the militantrums only laughed. 

During my stay in that community I had 
numerous opportunities to study the life and habits 
of the militantrum, provided it was done with dis- 
cretion and at a safe distance. With one excep- 
tion, each individual I encountered appeared to 
be eagerly desirous of being considered as a polite 
and painstaking, purely feminine lady-Moses who 
was leading all women up out of the darkness of 
Egypt into the Promised Land; and if there were 
any who did not wish to be led, they should be 
driven. The joys of suffrage awaited them over 
there ; and if any woman hesitated to exchange the 
bandbox for the ballot-box, the militantrum stood 
ready to show her the error of her way in short 
order. The one exception I have noted was a 
time-tried and fire-tested old specimen, who es- 
caped all the traps set for her and actually laughed 
to scorn every effort made to restrain her and pre- 
vent her predatory invasions of the rights of man 
and her attempted overthrow of his traditional 
privileges and prestige. Her name was Hester; 

124 



HESTER— 

THE MILITANTRUM 

and she very early began to manifest those yearn- 
ings for what her sex had always held to be the 
unattainable, which afterward made her famous. 
In the beginning, with the natural timidity of 
youth and inexperience, she did not attack popu- 
lar traditions except by talk; nor did she attempt 
to upset accepted idols except by turning currents 
of new thought upon them, hoping thus to blow 
them over. But as she advanced in years she dis- 
covered that actions speak louder than language, 
and one day she apeared in the forum with a 
brickbat in her hand. She announced that she 
was no longer a moral suasionist, but a strict co- 
ercionist, and that she proposed to land that brick- 
bat with a smash, the echoes of which would be 
heard round the world. The lesser militantrums 
present, armed with pebbles, let off a soprano 
cheer that could almost be heard around the cor- 
ner, and Hester heaved the brickbat at the near- 
est window. But here nature asserted herself and 
thwarted the purpose of Hester. Whatever 
changes women may effect in their political con- 
stitution, their physical constitution is immutable; 
and no woman, however powerful she may be- 
come, will ever be able to throw a brick as a man 
can. Hester could not, and the brick, going up 
into the air, hit a cat asleep on a shed roof and 

125 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

injured it so severely that she was arrested for 
cruelty to animals. Hester made a motion to 
have the charge changed to sedition and insurrec- 
tion in the first degree and take it before the su- 
preme court, but the police judge denied the mo- 
tion and fined the prisoner twenty-five dollars and 
costs. She thereupon demanded a retrial and a 
jail sentence so that she might go behind the 
cruel bars and starve in defense of her rights, — 
she knew all about court proceedings, — but the 
judge said he needed the money and the mili- 
tantrums took up a collection on the spot ; and not 
a man present dared refuse to contribute. Such 
is the influence of the weaker sex. 

But a passing episode of this sort did not dis- 
turb Hester a particle. She represented a grand 
principle, and was willing to suffer martyrdom 
in any or all of its forms for the sake of it. Some 
of the boldest intimated more or less directly that 
martyrs were never really and truly popular, nor 
amounted to very much anyway, until they were 
dead; but Hester declined to take any such hint 
as that. In the words of a great scholar and poet, 
she had come to stay. 

I do not recall at what age Hester chose a mate, 
although it was well known, one of the unnatural 
peculiarities ©f her kind being a perfect willing- 

il26 



HESTER— 

THE MILITANTRUM 

ness to tell her age; but she chose a mate and 
his identity soon became wholly lost. They had 
a nest, or a den, or a lair, somewhere; but Hester 
was too actively engaged on the basic principles 
of all human problems, and a constant chasing 
after the betterment of the world by the abase- 
ment of man, to bother about it. So her mate 
tried for a time to make it as comfortable as a 
mere man knew how to attend to such things, but 
he gave it up at last in despair and went to a 
boarding-house, the welcome harbor and safe 
haven of every nondescript that sails the troubled 
sea of life. There he enjoyed himself with calm 
resignation, not to say undisturbed delight, for 
Hester was away most of the time in the pursuit 
of her lofty purposes, and Mr. Hester, as the 
other boarders loved to call him, had no house- 
hold duties to perform, nor disquiet the serenity 
of his soul. Persons of a romantic and senti- 
mental turn of mind sometimes wondered what 
kind of courtship was that of Hester and her 
mate, — what of its moonlight and its music, its 
roses and its rapture, its wonder and its witchery, 
its caramels and its kisses, its terrors and its 
tenderness, its doubts and its deliciousness, and 
all the rest of the mystery and the magic of the 
moments that make man and woman a glorifica- 

127 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

tion of the object of their creation; but nobody 
had the nerve to ask Hester about it and nobody 
wanted to hurt her gentle mate's feelings by re- 
minding him of the contrast. They must have 
had some kind of a courtship though, because in 
the final analysis a militantrum is a human be- 
ing. 

Notwithstanding Hester despised man per se, 
she had an unquenchable yearn to be like his kind. 
She could not grow whiskers, nor talk bass; but 
men held positions which they had no inalienable 
right to and she wanted her share. Chief of all 
her desires was her desire to vote, to dictate the 
legislation of her state and nation, and to hold 
office by election or appointment. Nor was it 
so much that she wanted such things for their 
own sake, but because man had them; and, in 
her opinion, she was as good as any man that 
ever lived, and better than most. For suffrage, 
then, and other privileges which she included 
under the comprehensive but indefinite and ques- 
tionable title of Rights, Hester went forth with 
her cohorts to assault the citadel of her political 
foe and natural protector; and it is but justice to 
her to admit that she has succeeded in disturb- 
ing the peace in a great many quarters, here and 
elsewhere. She may have let the dust accumulate 

128 



H E S T E R— 

THE MILITANTRUM 



on the furniture and fixtures of her own house ; but 
she has made it fly in other places, and she is 
still at it. Even now there are whole states 
where the followers of Hester are recognized at 
the polls and their votes count for quite as much 
as do those of their foes. As yet they have not 
learned the finer details and intricacies of practical 
politics ; but when they have, it is quite supposable 
that their votes will count for more than those 
of their foes, should that be necessary to elect. 
The militantrum also holds office and is a mem- 
ber of the legislature, making speeches on the floor, 
albeit her voice is better fitted for singing lulla- 
bies than for oratory; she lobbies, on the side, for 
measures that interest her constituents, and she 
mixes it with "the boys," as the objects of her 
despisement did before she thrust them aside and 
took their places in running the machinery of 
government. So far she does not smoke and 
drink and chew and paint the town; but with her 
indomitable pluck, unlimited energy, universal 
ambition, and progressive purpose, she will be do- 
ing all that, too, in her great act of giving an 
imitation of a real man. 

The militantrum is an extremist. All mili- 
tantrums are females; but all females are not mili- 
tantrums, and on this contingent man depends for 

129 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

continuance as head of his race. The militantrum 
cannot be a father and will not be a mother, so 
there will be no militantrum babies. Militan- 
trums are made, not born; and while man stands 
at the front, with woman by his side, the militan- 
trum will have to catch on where it can. Man 
was made in the image of his Creator and so was 
the militantrum — God made man and the mili- 
tantrum made itself. Women have equal rights 
with man, they should have been recognized long 
ago, but the militantrum actually scared the men 
out of their proper senses, and they barricaded the 
doors of the Temple of Equality against every- 
thing in petticoats, as a matter of self-preserva- 
tion. 

As stated above, all militantrums are females, 
but all females are not militantrums, which re- 
lieves the females, as a sex, of grave responsibil- 
ity. It speaks well for the American genus that 
they are nothing like so rabid as the English brand 
— a rabidity due no doubt to excessive beef eat- 
ing — and this country has not thus far been com- 
pelled to put any specimens in cages as has been 
done in England. It is agreeable to note this, 
for however unimproving and destructive their 
methods may be, their purpose is quite the re- 
yerse and they really mean well. Perhaps they 

.130 



HESTER— 

THE MILITANTRUM 

can make history out of hysterics, but they can't 
make good laws, good politics, and good govern- 
ment that way, and they must be taught, even by 
ungallant and unsentimental means, that they 
must restrain their impetuosity and not make a 
slaughter-house of the battle-field. Emotion is not 
promotion. Petticoats are not patriotism. The 
Hesters of history will be of the past, not of the 
future, and the militantrum of politics will some 
day be extinct. Nations will see what is just 
and fair without having brickbats thrown through 
the windows of their understanding. 



131 



HEZEKIAH, A LOBSTER 

HOW many of us have ever got to know a 
tame animal? I do not mean merely to 
meet one once or twice formally, or to have one 
in a cage or a meat pie, but really to know one 
for a long time and get an insight into its life 
and history. The trouble is to know one crea- 
ture from his fellows. One lamb or one lobster 
is so much like another lamb or another lobster 
that we cannot be sure that it is the same the 
next time we meet it, — especially if it have a 
tendency to snub us. But once in a while there 
arises an animal which, by reason of predomi- 
nant superiority in his line, becomes a great leader, 
which is, as one would say, a genius, and if he is 
a bigger one, or has some earmark by which men 
can know him, he soon becomes famous in his 
neighborhood and shows us that the life of a 
tame animal may be far more exciting and ex- 
pensive than that of a wild one. 

Of this class was Hezekiah, who was a lobster, 
if there ever was one. He had been born dif- 
ferently, but grew into his later condition by 
imperceptible degrees, — imperceptible to him, that 
is to say, for goodness knows everybody else could 
perceive, with both eyes shut, whither he was 

132 



HEZEKIAH— 

A LOBSTER 

drifting. You know the tadpole, don't you, — no; 
no relation to the fish-pole, — that wiggle-tailed 
little dark brown inarticulate which is a citizen 
of the shallows as the whale is a denizen of the 
deep? And you know the frog? They do not 
look enough alike to be on speaking terms with 
each other, much less to be intimately related, 
yet they are closer than twins. Hezekiah was 
born a very decent sort of baby, but by the time 
he had accomplished his growth he produced in- 
dubitable proof of becoming a lobster, and when 
he had reached the thirty mark the most unskilled 
natural historian could have put his finger on him 
in the dark ten times in nine. 

You have no doubt heard that delightful soiip- 
gon in the way of dramatic tittle-tattle concern- 
ing the two chorus girls who were discussing, after 
the manner of their kind, the attractive side-lines 
pertaining to their branch of the histrionic Art. 
Art to a chorus girl is everything and she is wedded 
to it from the very start in her profession. She 
may get a divorce from other things she may be 
wedded to in the course of her artistic labors, but 
from Art, never. Indeed just how can she wed 
anything else and escape prosecution for bigamy is 
one of the stage mysteries, almost as puzzling to 
the natural historian as what she does with the rest 

133 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

of her salary after buying a big red touring car 
and loading the tonneau with fresh diamonds and 
a few frizzled dogs of the vintage of King Charles. 

But as I was on the point of saying: You have 
no doubt heard of the pair of chorus beauts who 
were talking at a luncheon de deux one day in 
that charmingly confidential fashion incidental to 
the golden age of girlhood. 

"When I was at Atlantic City during the sum- 
mer," one is represented as saying, "I got a pearl 
out of an oyster." 

"Oh, pickles," chittered and chattered the 
other, who was rather more chic than her com- 
panion, "that isn't in it with me at all. I got 
a diamond necklace and pendant out of a lobster 
at Newport." 

Well, whether you have heard the story or not, 
— and it is old enough for you to have read it in 
your primer at school, — the subject of this sketch 
was that lobster. He should have known the 
girl didn't care a rap for him and was playing 
him on a percentage, as it is spoken in dramatic 
circles, but he did not. He simply went right 
ahead, full speed, casting his heart and his soul 
and his diamond nicnax at her feet, as it were ; and 
before he had time to snatch the price mark off 
the next piece of jewelry he was getting ready 

134 



H E Z E K I A H— 

A LOBSTER 

to cast, I grieve to say that the girl married the 
hairy-headed leader of the orchestra, whose total 
claim to recognition was an intense and soulful 
manner and twenty-five per — when he got it. 

The lobster is provided by nature with 
antennae, or feelers, but he doesn't always have 
the brains to reach out with them in the proper 
direction. 

While Hezekiah was ambitious to be a glitter- 
ing man of the world and a lady-killer of the 
most fatal type, he was no less ambitious to be 
pointed out as a noted stock speculator and a 
Napoleon of Finance. The Napoleonic title ap- 
peared to be what he sought, though he must have 
known, if he knew Napoleon at all, that he had 
been Waterlooed off the map of Europe. He, 
— Hezekiah, not Napoleon, — had twenty thou- 
sand dollars, which he wished to raise to a hundred 
thousand, and casting the advice of certain long- 
headed veterans of the Street to the winds, he 
listened to the song of a siren in the shape of 
a kerbstone broker, and went in for the whole wad 
on Amalgamated Consolidated Brass, and got a 
wheelbarrow load of elegant-looking, gilt-edged 
certificates of stock. It may be explained that the 
word "gilt-edged," as here used, is different in 
meaning from the real gilt-edged thing in stocks 

135 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

or bonds. After Hezekiah got his load stored 
safely in his strong box he waited for the jump 
of the stock that the optimistic and sanguine 
broker had promised. It jumped all right, as 
far as the mere act of jumping went, but it was 
the other way, and Hezekiah got a half a cent 
a pound for a wheelbarrow load of old paper. 
The junk dealer innocently commented on the gilt 
edge of the certificates, and Hezekiah felt the 
need of all his Christian grace to restrain him from 
throwing the guiltless offender out of the window. 

"Lobsters," remarked his broker, in referring to 
the deal to a few confidential friends some time 
later, "are sometimes caught in pots, and some- 
times in nets, and sometimes you don't have to do 
a blamed thing but whistle and they will come 
right to you. I didn't have any pots and I didn't 
have any nets, but I got there just the same," 
and he whistled a long, low, lingering, loving 
note that touched the hearts of all who heard it. 

Hezekiah's spirit of speculation took other 
forms, the most common of which was risking his 
money in those chambers of chance which the high 
sense of duty and moral probity of every police 
official, of whatever grade, prompts him to abate 
as a great moral nuisance at every opportunity. 
Hezekiah should have known the perils that en- 

136 



H E Z E K I A H— 

A LOBSTER 

vironed his frequenting such places in the best 
governed city on earth, — they are all in that class, 
— but Hezekiah didn't, and one fatal night he 
was taken up, in the collection of prominent citi- 
zens made by the deacons of the police force, and 
was haled before the bar of justice. 

"What is your name?" inquired the Rhada- 
manthus of the Round Steak. 

"Mervale Montgomery Morrice," replied Heze- 
kiah, with a bold front. 

"You don't look it," said Rhadamanthus, 
piercing through his disguise with those keen, cold, 
judicial eyes of his. 

Now it is a well-known fact in natural history 
that when a lobster is dropped into hot water he 
turns red. Hezekiah was in hot water, very hot, 
and he got redder than an Idaho sunset, and as 
speechless. 

"Come, come," insisted Rhadamanthus, seeing 
he had him potted, "give us your real name. We 
need it in our business." 

Hezekiah looked around over a varied assort- 
ment of Smiths and Joneses and Browns and 
Robinsons, who had escaped with a ten dollar 
forfeit for their appearance, and came down off 
the lofty pinnacle of his nomenclature. Rhada- 
manthus, in token of his disapproval of prevari- 

137 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

cation, assessed Hezekiah's forfeit at twenty-five 
dollars, which, added to the one hundred and 
thirteen and a half he had dropped earlier in the 
evening, made his total loss $138.50 in money, not 
to mention his feelings and his reputation. 

Broiled live lobster is a well-known epicurean 
dish, but people who know a good thing when 
they see it rather enjoy the roasting of a live lob- 
ster. I imagine that is why the people laughed 
so that time at Hezekiah. 

Hezekiah was not a man of large wealth; he 
had just enough to feel the need of more, and 
as he was restricted by wise Trustees from mak- 
ing very large ventures with his principal, he de- 
termined to marry a fortune and show the world 
what kind of a genius he really was when he had 
capital with which to exploit himself. So he set 
forth, with his heart in his hand and his soul 
full of sentiment. It was not difficult to find 
women a-plenty with money a-plenty and most 
of them willing a-plenty, but Hezekiah was fas- 
tidious on some points as well as sentimental on 
others and he did not propose to take any old 
thing, simply because it had money. Hezekiah 
had a beautiful fantasy in his mind, an exalted 
sentiment permeating his manly bosom. It wasn't 
altogether the girl's money he was after; it was 

138 



HEZEKIAH— 

A LOBSTER 

her own sweet, true self. The luck was his way 
all right, as it generally is with a lobster if he only 
knew enough to know it, and before he was fully 
aware of what had happened to him, it was all 
so easy and natural, he was engaged to a really 
charming girl, the only child of an actual mil- 
lionaire. He could not have drawn a map of a 
more satisfactory situation than he was in, if he 
had been given carte blanche in cartography, and 
he began to figure out great calculations of what 
he would do by and by in the making of com- 
mercial and financial history. 

In the midst of his dreams came a great squeeze 
and slump in the very lines his fiancee's father was 
most interested in, and at the close of a Black- 
and-Blue Friday that good old man was utterly 
wiped out, and died of heart failure on the way 
home to tell his wife and daughter of the disaster 
that had overtaken them. Nothing was left of 
all his fortune except a small annuity to the wife 
and a "farm in Texas" that the girl's maternal 
grandfather had given to her, as a kind of joke. 
Hezekiah was stunned by the shock, but he re- 
covered quickly, and hastening to the dear one's 
side, he announced to her that he was ready to 
make a sacrifice for her sake, and he would re- 
lease her from her engagement to him, as he would 

139 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

not think of asking her to live with him in a 
manner to which she had never been accustomed. 
It was hard enough for her to be poor herself, but 
to be a poor man's wife was rubbing it on too 
thick, insisted the generous Hezekiah. There 
was a lot more of the same expressions of heroic 
self-sacrifice on the part of Hezekiah, and the girl 
at first could scarcely believe her ears ; but he con- 
vinced her after a while of the kind of unselfish 
being he was, and she thanked him, with deep 
gratitude for his unexpected kindness. 

The lobster, as may be perceived by observation 
and also by reference to the natural history book 
(see article under Homaris Americanus), possesses 
the power of going backward quite as easily and 
quickly as going forward, which power is chiefly 
defensive. 

To prove more conclusively to her that he had 
her best interests at heart, he exerted himself in 
her behalf and secured for her a situation in the 
office of a very wealthy friend of his, the salary 
of which, combined with the small annuity, made 
it possible for the mother and the daughter to live 
in comparative comfort. Hezekiah, in the mean- 
time, went hustling in other directions. The girl 
did not wish to accept the favor from Hezekiah, 
but she was sensible enough to know that it was 

140 



HEZEKIAH— 

A LOBSTER 

a good thing, and there was no benefit in cutting 
off her nose to spite her face; so she took it with 
thanks. At the end of a year she had so good 
a record and had given such satisfaction that she 
married her millionaire employer; and she not 
only asked Hezekiah to the wedding at the church, 
but to the reception at the house. At or about 
the same time her Texas farm showed signs of 
oil of such oleaginous richness that she sold half 
of it for a million and a half dollars, and was 
holding the other half for a rise in real estate. 
The girl was prettier and more charming than 
ever, too, and when Hezekiah thought on these 
things he gnashed his teeth clear back to his wis- 
doms, saying in wrath and bitterness: 

"Oh Lord, oh Lord, what a lobster is Thy 
servant I" 

Not long after this, Hezekiah married one of 
the others he had skipped on the first round. How 
it turned out I cannot say further than that one 
morning I casually asked him how married life 
was, and he responded earnestly: 

"If there ever was a downright, dern lobster 
on this earth, I'm it." 

Once a lobster, always a lobster, is a maxim 
that is reliable, I guess; and Hezekiah has no 
doubt reached the chronic stage and is incurable. 

141 



ELIZA, A GOOSE 

ONE who is at all conversant with the theories 
and conditions of the individuals who are in- 
cluded under the general title of natural history 
would scarcely believe that the mere writing of a 
name on a small bit of paper would make a 
changed being of a reasoning creature; yet Eliza 
had no sooner put her name to the temperance 
pledge than she was transformed from a fair-aver- 
age nice girl of twenty-four summers into an en- 
tirely different proposition. 

In other words, signing the pledge made a per- 
fect goose of her, and everybody in the whole 
neighborhood said so, and didn't go behind her 
back to say it, either. 

She was engaged, at the time, to the pick of 
the county; but, because he didn't have a crazy 
fit like she did, — goodness knows what ever 
brought it on Eliza, — and sign the pledge with 
her, and agree never to touch liquor again in any 
form, she broke her engagement and refused to 
marry him. He was not a drinking man at all, 
and did not object to her signing as many pledges 
as she pleased, and abstaining from all intoxicat- 
ing drinks, including mince pies; but he didn't 

142 



ELIZA— 

A GOOSE 

feel the need of any restraining power like that 
himself, and having a few ideas of his own on 
so-called temperance movements besides, he de- 
clined to pledge himself to anything beyond his 
love for the girl of his choice. 

But Eliza had her mind set on having him 
do her way, and because he would not be forced 
into measures, she threw him over. He was a 
man of strong feelings and steadfast affection, 
loving Eliza with all his heart and soul and mind ; 
and when she refused to marry him, he went right 
away and, for the first time in his life, got drunk. 
Good and drunk, too, for it was a dreadful blow ; 
and some men believe that sorrow may be 
drowned in the flowing bowl. This conduct on 
the part of the man she had chosen convinced 
Eliza that she was perfectly right in refusing him 
unless he signed the pledge, although he had never 
needed it during the previous thirty-five years of 
his life; and she devoutly thanked the Lord for 
saving her in time. 

When he recovered from his falling from grace, 
he was profoundly ashamed and sought Eliza's 
forgiveness, asking for an opportunity to re- 
establish himself in her good opinion. She was 
horrified at the very idea; and from that day 
forth the man dulled the pain of his hurt with 

143 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

drink until the end came and he found peace in 
the grave. A drunkard's grave, too; and Eliza 
saw not her own hand in his undoing. She 
thought only of herself, and from what shame and 
suffering she 'had been saved by her firmness in 
refusing to marry a man like that. 

Eliza, having seen at close range the dreadful 
effects of drink, determined to devote her best 
energies to the destruction of the Demon Rum. 
Many noble women, — wives, mothers, sweethearts, 
and sisters, — had done great good in the cause by 
moral suasion, early training, and other old-time 
methods; but Eliza, with a wholesome contempt 
for the milder measures, announced publicly that 
desperate diseases required remedies to match, and, 
furthermore, that a man, as constituted these days, 
could only be slugged into salvation. Saving him 
by grace was a cowardly compromise, according 
to the Eliza idea. Inspired by the genius of em- 
phasis, she organized her army and set out on a 
crusade against the Legions of Hell, as she char- 
acterized those who differed with her in belief. 

This crusade business was originally an open- 
air procession of the hosts of Eliza, along the 
highways and byways of city or town on which 
were located the stations of Satan, with halts for 
prayer on the sidewalks in front of such saloon 

!144 



ELIZA— 

A GOOSE 

or den of infamy as may have been chosen for 
conversion, regeneration, and salvation. The 
method was enjoyed by large crowds of people, 
because of its novelty, because there wasn't 
anything else going on in town, or be- 
cause of the exciting prospect always pre- 
sented of a rip-snorting old riot. But after a 
time it began to lose interest, and Eliza found that 
she needed something spectacular to go with it. 
Plain processions with plain prayer were not 
enough; the picturesque and pungent was what 
was needed to keep the pot boiling. Eliza was 
resourceful; she had kept people too long in hot 
water not to be. The old open-air style was con- 
tinued; but after the services on the sidewalk in 
front of the Demon's domicile, Eliza and her 
flock would fearlessly waddle within the portals 
of the dreadful place, to pray with the barkeeper 
and punch him in the slats, if he declined to ac- 
cept salvation on the terms offered, meanwhile 
emptying barrels and kegs and demijohns and 
bottles and flasks and jugs and carboys and casks, 
and splashing liquid damnation all over the land- 
scape for miles and miles. If the saloonist at- 
tempted to stop the festivities long enough to 
inquire politely who was going to pay for the 
drinks, he regretted his inquisitiveness and 

145 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

hastened to apologize, at the same time extending 
an invitation to Eliza to come again next day and 
hold another prayer-meeting on the remains. 

The goose is not, as a rule, a predatory and de- 
structive animal; but I break into the narrative 
here long enough to ask the fair-minded reader if 
any creature on earth but a goose, and one of the 
most pronounced type, could for a moment 
imagine that this was the sensible and proper 
method of dealing with one of the Seven Evils'? 

I do not happen to have statistics and other 
data at hand to show how many persons were 
saved from drunkards' graves by Eliza's novel 
plan; but evidently the results were not as bene- 
ficial as the crusaders had expected, because in 
time Eliza and her flock felt that they were pur- 
suing a course which was entirely too mild and 
milky, and unless real active measures were re- 
sorted to the Demon would dominate the entire 
earth before the middle of next week. With this 
conviction firmly fixed, Eliza pawed the ground 
for a while and crusaded again, growing a little 
more intense day by day ; introducing more muscle 
and less morals into her methods; slipping away 
from persuasion and going to force; forgetting 
the principle of the offense in the personality of 
the offender; failing to touch the great central 

146 



ELIZA— 

A GOOSE 

cause, in the efforts to reach the comparatively in- 
significant, outlying effects, and finally omitting 
prayer and substituting the axe, as the only true 
and effective weapon against the liquor traffic. 
She made no effort to correct the habits and cus- 
toms and tastes of generations of ages ; of all time, 
in fact, since the Creator had made man to en- 
joy the fruits of the field, along with the other 
good things of earth. That was not her idea at 
all. It was to change the whole nature of man 
at one blow; to destroy his tastes and desires by 
suddenly, and without due notice, destroying all 
means of gratifying them. That was where the 
axe idea came in; and Eliza not only sought to 
make sausage meat of Bacchus, but to raze his tem- 
ples to the ground and convert them into kindling- 
wood, whereby to build fires for his everlasting 
roasting. It was hard lines for Bacchus, but the 
boom in booze continued just the same, and not a 
distillery shut down nor a brewery closed its doors. 

The goose does not, as a rule, lie in wait for its 
prey; but would any animal, except a goose, 
swoop down like that on a helpless community*? 

The saloon-keepers became terrorized by the 
frequency and the ferocity of Eliza's incursions, 
and they closed their erstwhile crystal and gilded 
palaces, crying, in their dismay, on the law to pro- 

H7 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

tect them and swat Eliza. But the law, although 
not made by Eliza, and therefore supposed to be 
inimical to her interests, appeared to be unequal 
to the task; and Eliza escaped to her haunts, to re- 
turn again whenever the spirits moved her. As 
elsewhere noted, statistics are not at hand to show 
how many souls were saved from the drink Demon 
by Eliza and her flock of crusaders ; but Eliza was 
not making statistics. Hers was a nobler ambi- 
tion. She wanted to show the old-fashioned 
women how to break up the traffic that was ruin- 
ing husbands, fathers, and sons ; and she did show 
them — one way. That she did not show them 
how it could be kept broken up does not concern 
this narrative, I am not dealing in questions of 
the future. My object is merely to give the 
reader some idea of the general characteristics of a 
species of animal by presenting incidents in the 
career of one individual of the species that is dis- 
tinguished among its kind. 

Some naturalist or other, whose name escapes 
me, has asked, "What crops grass as close as a 
goose?" Eliza married the answer to the ques- 
tion, and the two constituted a combination in re- 
straint of common sense that was fearfully and 
wonderfully compounded, for the gander of this 
kind of goose is only saved from being worse than 

148 



ELIZA— 

A GOOSE 

the goose by its meek and lowly submission to the 
real head of the family, and by its abject admira- 
tion of, and sublime confidence in, the same. 
Eliza did not find it necessary to ask this one to 
sign the pledge; it was born that way, and it 
would have died, so it would, before a drop of the 
vile stuff should pass its lips. No goslings blessed 
this union. God moves in a mysterious way His 
wonders to perform. 

When I last heard of Eliza she was compara- 
tively quiet, but I was reliably informed that she 
was likely to break out at any minute and do more 
harm to the law-abiding and orderly name of the 
community than all the saloons in ten counties 
would do, under proper control of the authorities. 
She had about her a fiock of anserine followers, to 
whom temperance had no other meaning than an 
excessive use of intoxicating liquors as a beverage. 
If it were even so much as hinted to them that 
there were other forms of intemperance quite as 
contrary to the teaching of the gospel of love and 
charity, the hinter was in imminent danger of be- 
ing raided with prayer and pitchforks and chased 
out of the neighborhood at the muzzle of a club, 
or the point of a hatchet. 

Any creature on earth, except a goose, knows 
that the common sense, practical method of deal- 

149 



TAME ANIMALS 

I HAVE KNOWN 

ing with an evil, coexistent with mankind, is to 
restrict it within proper bounds and to get out of 
it such good as there is in it, for surely there is 
some good in it, or the All-wise Providence would 
not have created the liquor or the creature with 
an appetite for it that demanded gratification. 
Eliza, being a goose, has not tumbled to this great 
cosmic truth, as have we who are not of her kind. 
Sometimes, only sometimes, mind you, we wonder 
why in thunder the Lord ever included Eliza in 
His invoice of created things. Maybe it was to 
teach the rest of us that although some of us 
thought He had done His very worst in creating 
intoxicating liquors. He really hadn't, and we had 
another guess coming. 

When Eliza dies and goes to the place where 
there isn't anything to drink, — and, goodness 
knows, she would rather not die at all than go to 
a drinking place, — she will begin to yearn for a 
drop of something wet, and by and by she will 
know what it is to have a thirst. Then, perhaps, 
she will wish she hadn't been a goose. 

A goose has feathers, but they are not the kind 
that grow on angels' wings. 

THE END 



150 



4 1912 



